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April 12, 2025 A powerful  article by leading demographer Lyman Stone  highlights that marriage is “by far the most important factor shaping fertility”. I caught up with Lyman, whose research points out that 75% of the fertility decline since 2007 is directly tied to falling marriage rates. Watch our  full interview  online here or a  shorter 14 minute version here . In our full conversation, Lyman stresses the urgency of understanding that marriage isn’t just about tradition – it’s the cornerstone of thriving societies. He makes it crystal clear: “Married people still have way more kids”, and marriage itself directly increases fertility. He emphasises that “the more years you spend in marriage, the more babies you have”, demonstrating why earlier marriages are crucial. Our current replacement rate of 1.44 means the population shrinks by a third every generation, a drastic decline with profound implications. Immigration often comes up as a potential solution, but this is not a sustainable long-term fix. Lyman emphasises that real marriage remains the only viable and proven solution for societies to thrive long-term. Yes, Marriage Still Matters For Fertility: New Evidence   By Lyman Stone With fertility  falling around the world , many commentators and governments are scrambling to figure out why and  what can be done . A  recent  Financial Times  article , which heavily  cited previous work at IFS  and replicated some of our analyses, correctly pointed the finger at the main culprit the decline in fertility: falling marriage rates. Declining marriage is the proximate cause of falling fertility in many societies today. Highlights 1.      Not only do these findings tell us that marriage still matters for having babies, but marriage is the most important factor shaping fertility. Post This 2.      Both marital and nonmarital first birth rates have declined, though—on the whole—marital first birth rates remain very similar to where they were at any point between the 1970s and today. Post This 3.      A whopping 75% of the total fertility decline since 2007 is attributable to the shifting likelihood that people are married. Post This This surprises many people, because, in the public’s imagination, nonmarital childbearing is running rampant, while marriage is becoming a thing of the past. In short, these impressions are wrong. In the U.S., the share of births born to unmarried parents is  gradually drifting downwards these days . But more to the point, far from being a thing of the past, marriage remains overwhelmingly predictive of fertility behavior. Married people make more babies, and this is true all around the world,  as we showed in a 2022 report . This January, new evidence for the importance of marriage for understanding fertility became available. Since the 1950s, the U.S. government has run a series of family surveys which operate today as the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The last wave available was a survey covering 2017-19. But the 2022-23 survey wave has now been released. These surveys include retrospective marriage and fertility data that allow us to ask a simple question: What are the odds a childless person had a first birth  before  a first marriage vs.  after  a first marriage? Put simply, how much does getting married increase the odds that women start having children?  It’s important to focus on first births, since the lion’s share of fertility decline in the last 20 years has been due to rising childlessness and, thus, declining rates of first births. The figure below updates a figure we produced for the IFS report mentioned above to include the 2022-2023 NSFG survey respondents. Marital first-birth rates dropped sharply between the 1930s and 1970s, even as nonmarital fertility rates dropped between the 1930s and 1950s, then rose between the 1950s and 1980s. As of the 1980s, it did look like maybe marriage was no longer important for family formation: unmarried women’s first birth rates were near historic highs, and married women’s at historic lows. But in the 1990s, childless unmarried women started becoming less likely to have a first birth, especially due to falling teen birth rates. Meanwhile, marital first birth rates rose. In the ensuring decades, both marital and nonmarital first birth rates have declined, though, on the whole, marital first birth rates remain very similar to where they were at any point between the 1970s and today. The key thing to note, however, is the gap. In the 2020s, the (modestly-sized) NSFG sample suggests unmarried women were  extremely  unlikely to have a first birth, whereas for married women without children, there was about a 15% probability of having children in the next year (with, of course, appreciable variation by age). In other words, marriage still predicts vastly higher fertility. Even today, though people sometimes report in surveys that marriage isn’t all that important for childbearing, the fact is people overwhelmingly prefer to be married before having children, and thus most delay pregnancy until they have a spouse. When it comes to having babies, marriage still matters.  And in fact, declining marriage is by far the most important explanation for falling fertility writ large. The figure below uses data from the American Community Survey’s 2001-2023 fertility and marital status microdata, and shows three different fertility trajectories. The first is just the total fertility rate as measured by the ACS (not an exact fit for actual TFRs from vital statistics, but highly correlated). The second line shows what the total fertility rate  would have been  if marital fertility rates had stayed flat at their 2007 levels all the way to 2023. The third line shows what the total fertility rate  would have been  if  age-specific married population shares  had stayed flat at their 2007 levels until 2023. Based on ACS data, if marital fertility rates had stayed stable after 2007, fertility today would actually be  even lower : the combination of shifting age-specific fertility rates by marital status and the changing actual prevalence of marriage pushed marital births  upwards , especially after 2015. On the other hand, if the share of people married by age had remained stable at 2007 levels, and birth rates  within  marriage had followed their actual historic trajectory, fertility rates today would be about 12% higher. In the ACS data, this means fertility would be at replacement level. A whopping 75% of the total fertility decline since 2007 is attributable to the shifting likelihood that people are married. These findings tell us that, not only does marriage matter for having babies, but marriage is by far the most  important  factor shaping fertility. Nothing else is going to account for 75% of the observed change. And furthermore, married couples are not turning away from having children! As the orange line above shows, changes in the odds that married people choose to have kids just can’t explain almost  any  of the decline in fertility. When Americans today get married, they have babies just like married people at their ages did in the past. Explanations for falling fertility that place the blame on  couples choosing not to have kids  probably can’t explain much about declining fertility, since changes in within-couple behavior are not the main story!  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do more to  help  couples choose to have kids! Getting people to marry younger may prove difficult, expectations of having kids may shape marital behavior, and married people still overwhelmingly tend to undershoot their fertility goals. Even if declining marriage rates are the main  cause,  helping couples have more of the children they desire may be part of the  solution . But it’s only part of it: the United States also needs a serious pro-marriage agenda that will dramatically improve the economic and social supports and opportunities for young people to pair off and start families. Lyman Stone is Senior Fellow and Director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

By  Gavin Ashenden   THE STREAM April 11, 2025   We were warned that the Left was conducting a long march through the institutions in order to establish dystopian Marxist outcomes, but it was a surprise to see how quickly the success has come in the last 20 years. Equality of outcome and anti-Christian persecution have walked hand-in-hand. Suddenly, in the United Kingdom, freedom of speech has been sucked out of the public space by a Leftist government which is only too happy to express its totalitarian ambitions. The oppression against Christians that has taken place in the last few months alone is breathtaking. Let’s begin with a Christian nurse named Jennifer Melle. She has just been suspended from the National Health Service and effectively lost her job. Why? Because a patient who had been sent to her ward from a prison wanted to leave the hospital. But before that could happen, he needed to have a catheter removed from his penis. However, Patient X – who was in prison for being a pedophile — presented and identified himself as a female. Speaking to the doctor on the phone outside Patient X’s room, discussing the biological dynamics of removing the catheter, Melle referred to Patient X as “mister” and “he.” “This was a real-life medical scenario that required accurate terminology to avoid any doubt between medical professionals,” she later explained. Yet Patient X objected. “Imagine if I called you a n++*****” he told Melle, who is black. “How about I call you a n*****? “Yes, black n****.” He then lunged at her, despite being restrained, and promised he would make an official complaint for being “misgendered.” As a result, Melle was suspended from her job, and then fired from the National Health Service. Dr. Livia Tossici-Bolt has worked as a research scientist. Now retired, she is 64. Some time ago, she was standing in a buffer zone near an abortion clinic, silently holding a hand-made sign which simply said: “Here to talk. If you want to.” As in the U.S., the British state is on hyperalert for any kind of perceived “harassment” of people approaching abortion facilities. This one is surrounded by a buffer zone in which actions such as protesting, displaying distressing images, or engaging in other forms of demonstration that might influence or intimidate patients and staff are illegal. Tossici-Bolt’s sign was carefully crafted to simply facilitate a conversation if the other person took the initiative, but she was still arrested and charged with violating the public space protection order (PSPO). Once in court, the judge said it is a fact that “the sign made no reference to pregnancy, abortion, or religious matters.” One of the police who arrested her “he did not witness her intimidating or harassing any individual.” Nonetheless, the judge still found Tossici-Bolt guilty of violating a PSPO and ordered her to pay a £20,000 fine. This astonishing sum of money represents the price the state is prepared to extort from any citizen who challenges the complete ban on speech it doesn’t like. Equally damaging to personal liberty and free speech is the way the state has persecuted a Christian woman named Isabel Vaughan-Spruce. She was arrested several times for standing and discreetly praying in abortion clinic buffer zones. She sued the government for false imprisonment — and won. Nonetheless the police continue to harass her. She was rearrested only a few weeks ago – this time with police saying that because she is now a publicly recognizable person with notorious views on abortion,  her face alone  is a form of harassment to those who feel differently. This means the police have assumed the power to effectively dictate where a Christian with a public profile can walk or even appear — or where they cannot appear, which potentially constitutes a form of house arrest. When Vice President JD Vance made his powerful speech at the Munich Security Conference in March, he warned Europe in general and the UK in particular that the State Department is keeping an eye on the British government, and that there can be no free trade without guarantees of free speech. This warning comes at a time when the left-wing government in Britain has brought the nation to the brink of economic collapse. British politicians could dismiss Vance’s warning as unpleasant rhetoric — a threat they do not have to act on. But things are about to get a lot worse. The Labour government is drafting legislation that will unjustly and illogically turn any form of disapproval of Islam into a racist hate crime. Given that Islam is neither defined nor confined by race, this prospect is as contradictory as it is repressive. It will effectively create a specific blasphemy law that protects Islam — and only Islam, making any criticism of the religion potentially criminal. The government is also about to implement an “Online Safety Act” which will criminalize on-line “hate speech.” It requires no imagination at all that what the state deems “hate speech” will include the language of Christian ethics and belief. Christians in the United Kingdom are not posturing when they express sincere gratitude to the US government for its concern for them. But more than that, we are convinced that only serious economic pain inflicted on both the country and the government will create sufficient leverage to protect our freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Once again, in our struggle with tyranny and the threat of the loss of our freedom and Christian culture, we appeal to Americans’ fortitude, generosity and courage to come to our aid in a desperate and dangerous moment in history.  Gavin Ashenden is associate editor of the  Catholic Herald .  Formerly a priest of the  Church of England , and subsequently a  continuing Anglican  bishop, he was appointed  Chaplain to the Queen  from 2008 until his resignation in 2017.

A new Barna survey reveals a significant rise in belief in Jesus among Americans, with 66% now affirming a personal commitment to Him—the highest...   By Michael Foust CROSSWALK April 10, 2025   Belief in Jesus is on the rise in the United States, according to a major new Barna survey that challenges conventional wisdom about the role of Christianity in America. The survey found that 66 percent of U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today -- a 12-point increase since 2022 and the highest recorded level in the poll since 2012.   Belief in Jesus has risen each year since 2022, shortly after the pandemic, perhaps indicating that the crisis prompted a renewed search for meaning. Gen Z and Millennials are helping drive the renewed interest, the data shows.   “This shift is not only statistically significant -- it may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States,” a Barna analysis said.   The new data may be the first official confirmation of a trend that other indicators across society have already suggested -- a growing belief in Jesus. The hit Bible-based series The Chosen has amassed more than 200 million viewers worldwide as its cast has drawn mainstream media attention rare for a faith-based project. Another Bible-based series, House of David, hit No. 1 on Prime Video.   Mega-popular podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson have devoted entire episodes to discussing the Bible. Across cultures, movie and sports personalities are increasingly vocal about their belief in Jesus. Also, the national He Gets Us campaign has brought messages about Jesus to millions. Meanwhile, the Unite US worship movement continues to draw thousands of students on college campuses.   The Barna data would equate to nearly 30 million more Americans professing a belief in Jesus.   “Undeniably, there is renewed interest in Jesus,” David Kinnaman, CEO of Barna, said of the new data. “Many people have predicted the growing irrelevance of Christianity; however, this data shows that spiritual trends have a dynamism and can, indeed, change. This is the clearest trend we’ve seen in more than a decade pointing to spiritual renewal -- and it’s the first time Barna has recorded such spiritual interest being led by younger generations.”   The Barna data found a major increase in belief in Jesus among Gen Z and Millennials, especially among men (67 percent among Gen Z men and 71 percent among Millennial men). Among women, belief rates stand at 61 percent among Gen Z and 64 percent among Millennials.   “Young people -- especially men -- are leading the shift toward Jesus,” the Barna analysis said.   The spiritual renewal among young people is a significant change from previous Barna tracking, which “showed Elders and Boomers as more committed Christians than younger generations,” the analysis said.   Meanwhile, nearly three in 10 U.S. adults say they have a personal commitment to Jesus yet do not identify as Christian -- indicating they are hesitant to embrace organized religion, Barna said.   “At this time, we are seeing interest in Jesus that is growing among those who do not otherwise describe themselves as Christians, indicating that many of the new followers of Jesus are not just ‘recycled’ believers,” Kinnaman said. “Along with younger generations coming to Jesus, this is another strong sign that interest in Jesus is brewing in new population segments of society.”   Kinnaman said the “why” behind the positive data is not easily answered.   “While social research can effectively track trends, it may not always identify the root causes behind them,” he said. “Still, the pandemic undeniably disrupted life for everyone, creating space for existential questions and the pursuit of meaning.”   The new spiritual renewal movement, he said, offers an opportunity for the church.   “As Christian leaders navigate this changing landscape, one thing is clear: Jesus is still attracting people -- even those who have left the pews or never sat in them,” Kinnaman said. “The opportunity is not just to count commitments but to help shape people into lifelong disciples.”   END

Five leaders weigh in on Welby’s tenure. Not one has a good word to say about him.   COMMENTARY   By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org April 10, 2025   It’s hard not to imagine Justin Welby’s day of judgement before the Lord of the universe being much worse than it already is.   He imagined himself a latter-day William Temple, but as Archbishop of Canterbury he flipped and flopped, floundering inside the walls of Lambeth Palace on the Bank of the Thames River, anything but secure; judged now for his incompetence, bad decisions leading to his resignation over something he had little control over.   He thought he could run the church out of a management handbook that he had learned while an oilman later reinforced by Bishop Ian Cundy whose management playbook he took with him to Lambeth Palace. It was a disastrous decision and cost him and the church. Sadly, it can never be undone.   Welby has been a living nightmare for the Church of England since he became a bishop. He nearly bankrupted the Diocese of Durham during his eight months there, before financially and theologically bankrupting the Church of England.   It is becoming apparent just how powerful the upper-class protestant underworld has been in the Church of England, grooming and promoting arrogant and utterly incompetent wealthy young men to form a hidden society of senior leaders, controlling the narrative, and in Welby’s case, everything.   “He is the most complete example of a control freak I have ever encountered. I do not think that he has any capacity for self-doubt. He appears to have resigned in order to ‘take one for the team’ – which has so far survived largely intact, with attention focused on Welby,” said a noted observer.   However, as a retired member of the clergy rather than Archbishop of Canterbury, he has lost all of the protection from challenges which his office gave him, and he is now in precisely the same position as George Carey, subject to canon law, and likely at some point to be barred from officiating by his successor.   The Church of England currently has three retired Archbishops barred from officiating – Hope, Sentamu and Carey – and Welby will likely be the fourth. Only Rowan remains and he is now back in Wales, and subject to the jurisdiction of the Church in Wales.   George Pitcher, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest who knows Justin Welby, said Welby’s recent BBC interview was a very bad idea. What was he thinking?   “Perhaps the former Archbishop of Canterbury intended to convey remorse and accountability in his conversation with Laura Kuenssberg. But that’s not how it’s been received,” observed Pitcher.   If Welby still has advisers, what were they and he thinking? The very first question anyone should have asked him as he considered going on the BBC is: What do you want to get out of this? We can only speculate what his answer that might have been. He looked defeated.   A journalist friend who knows him a bit said he looked “deflated”, like he’d been punctured, slightly slouched in his seat, slack-paunched, only making eye contact with Kuenssberg when he had to. However much he repeated that it was all his fault, the impression given, intentionally or not, was “poor me”. Once again, he comes over as the victim, rather than focusing exclusively on those countless victims of Smyth.   Why reappear? No one has demanded his public presence again. He could have slipped quietly into the obscurity of retirement. By his own admission, he had already made a truly dreadful valedictory speech in the House of Lords, in which he joked about the situation in which so many people had suffered through his professional neglect.   Angela Tilby, writing in The Church Times, said, following the BBC interview, that it showed the tragedy of Welby. “I found it impossible not to be moved as he sat still like a prisoner, or at least a penitent, as, for nearly 40 minutes, Ms. Kuenssberg politely but firmly hammered in the nails, and, again and again, he expressed profound sorrow at the safeguarding failures that led to his resignation last November.”   “There has been much tragedy in Bishop Welby’s life: an unhappy childhood, the death of his own child in infancy, and a depressive tendency that runs through the family. Towards the end of the interview, he expressed a longing for the obscurity of private life.   “It left me wondering whether the greatest tragedy of his life was to have been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. It was, after all, an unlikely appointment. He had only recently become Bishop of Durham; he was a late ordinand, having previously worked in the oil industry, and he was initially turned down for ordination.”   “For all his well-earned reputation as a reconciler, he never really had the bandwidth to cope with the demands of those who had promoted him and expected him to toe the line. But then this was the central dilemma of his episcopate. He is a product of the Iwerne camps, with their repressed homo-eroticism and, in some quarters, disregard for the wider Church of England. It was his misfortune to have come from the same stable as the serial abuser Smyth.”   Tim Wyatt, writing for The New Statesman focused on the Smyth affair and Welby’s initial lackluster response, had this to say; “If the former archbishop of Canterbury hoped his self-abnegation on the BBC might salvage what was left of his reputation, he was wrong.” The scale of the safeguarding problem was why he failed to adequately respond to the case that would ultimately bring his tenure to an end 11 years later. Welby resigned, becoming the first ever head of the Church to step down in disgrace.   Gavin Ashenden writing for the Catholic Herald said of the BBC interview that there was a kind of quantum element to it: contradictory streams of thought within a single conversation. At one and the same time, there was an air of self-pity and victimhood running under the surface as an implicit sub-motif; while at the same time the questions and answers on the surface displayed an ineptitude and incoherence that were more likely to result in serious criticism than sympathy.   “It seems odd for someone who was responsible for running a multi-billion-pound organization to claim that he lacked the resources to manage the daily business that came to his office. It was not a question of lacking resources, so what was lacking?   Rebecca Chapman, a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, writing in the Spectator , thought she might have the key to Welby’s early difficulties in managing his daily business. She suggested that his unhelpful and possibly overly egocentric global travel plans had dominated his daily schedule.   She wrote of her astonishment that “much of the diary juggle seemed to be his own making as he kicked off a self-imposed plan to visit every single primate of the Anglican Communion over the next 18 months”.   One of the strangest elements in the interview was the lack of any spiritual, theological or moral perspective that you might expect a senior Church leader to offer when presented with the complex relationship between post-Christian society and the Christian state Church. Welby spoke more as a frustrated managerial executive than as a retired bishop offering help to interpret the opposing values of two conflicting worldviews.   But Welby’s biggest failure was, that as an Evangelical with Charismatic leanings, he had worked briefly at Holy Trinity, Brompton, that he failed to deliver for evangelicals. The ever-powerful Evangelical networks chose him as their man, trusting him to promote their particular vision of mission and growth, which he did, as far as he could, setting the Church on a path of rewarding church-planting and innovation over traditional parish ministry.   In his years as Archbishop, he gradually outgrew his initial supporters. As his archiepiscopate went on, he upset the Evangelical lobbies and a substantial part of the Anglican Communion over gay relationships, greatly overestimating his ability to bring them on board. Many of the Global South provinces separated themselves from him and will not acknowledge the leadership of the Church of England.   A deep influencer on Welby was Bishop Ian Cundy. Dr. Marianne Leeds (she must remain anonymous) gave the background on Welby that perhaps explains all.   “Welby did not read Theology at Cambridge. He studied Law in year 1, and modern history in years 2 and 3. He graduated with a second-class degree in Modern History in 1978. He went from Cambridge to a job in the City and from there to work in the oil industry.   Sometime later he was drawn into Alpha, which was and is very much an upper-class phenomenon, a theology-lite social circle, and from there he decided to seek ordination. He went to train at Cranmer Hall, Durham, in 1989, and studied theology there for two years, graduating with an MA in 1991.   While he was there, he came very firmly under the influence of the college principal, another evangelical public schoolboy named Ian Cundy, who saw himself as some kind of management guru, which clearly appealed to the former oil executive Justin Welby. Evangelical theology and gospel ministry gave way to delusions of a management revolution in the Church of England, and Welby went to Coventry Diocese (where the bishop was another Old Etonian) to be a curate at first, then Vicar of a parish while spending much of his time at Coventry Cathedral promoting its Reconciliation Ministry, based on the bombing of Coventry Cathedral during the war.   It is clear that he retained very close links with Cundy, who became Bishop first of Lewes in Sussex, and then Bishop of Peterborough, where he set out to implement his management plans for the Church of England, which he called “Setting God’s People Free” – free from clergy, parishes and church life as people know it in England. He also produced a version for the House of Bishops and set about persuading his colleagues to adopt it elsewhere.   Perhaps the most enthusiastic adopter was his disciple from Durham, who was suddenly and astonishingly catapulted into office as ABC, despite lacking any significant experience as a bishop, or any higher qualification in theology – but with a plan to revolutionize the Church of England with his own management strategy. Ian Cundy died in 2009, but his mantle had been literally handed on to Welby, who inherited his cope and miter and other robes and wore them throughout his time in office.   Welby was a close associate of several ordained city figures, including the now disgraced Paula Vennells, a part time minister in charge of the Post Office. They came up with a plan to reinvent the House of Bishops by creating a talent stream of clergy candidates who displayed management rather than theological prowess, to be appointed as bishops, including senior people from other professions who it was thought could switch from a secular role to being a bishop, such as Sarah Mullally, now Bishop of London, former Chief Nursing Officer for England.   At the same time, he remained clearly under the influence of Cundy, and eventually a proposal called Vision & Strategy was presented by Welby and the current ABY to the General Synod, not for approval but as a fait accompli, in which the historic parish system would be left to wither on the vine, with its resources progressively transferred to high profile HTB/Alpha style plants around the country.   Significant amounts of money which should have been funding the parish ministry across the country were handed over to unicorn projects, many of which spent the money but failed to flourish once it was gone forever. The impact on the dioceses and parishes of the Church of England has been disastrous, with many churches having to close their doors, or share one priest among many churches.   The combination of Welby’s manager-bishops (few if any competent at management, and even fewer having actually read theology) together with the Cundy program for the demolition of parish ministry has been a long nightmare for the Church of England, and one which will continue long into his enforced retirement, with many of those he appointed still actively setting the Church free of clergy, places of worship and of basic theology.   Welby will be remembered for his disastrous handling of the largest safeguarding failure in the Church of England’s history, set out in the Makin Report. But his attempt to remake the Church of England in the image of his former college principal has been the greatest failure of his time in a great office for which he was always ill-equipped from the beginning.   As Ashenden observed, Plain Bishop Welby, in his blue open-necked shirt, has carried the can not only for safeguarding errors, but for the whole theology that has been used to mold the C of E into its image and is now exposed as theologically and morally bankrupt.   END

By Ian Paul https://www.psephizo.com April 10, 2025    Project Spire is the name that has been given to the  Church Commissioner’s decision to put aside £100m of their investments  to be directed to working with and for communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery, with the intention that it creates a lasting legacy. The £100 million, which will be built up over the 9-year period of the three triennia through to 2031, sits alongside the £3.6 billion indicative distributions that the Commissioners have articulated for the corresponding periods.   I  commented on this last year , noting the lack of evidence, the racist assumptions behind the goals of the project, and the way that this has been driven by  ideology instead of Christian theology . For my troubles, I was identified in the Fifth Report of the Racial Justice Group as an ‘Anglican blogger’ who puts out a ‘false narrative’ that must be ‘suppressed’ (p 23). Actually engaging with the issues raised might have been more productive!   In February, the think tank Policy Exchange published a more detailed critique by four people: politician Lord Tony Sewell, Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at Oxford, Charles Wide KC, a retired Old Bailey Judge, and Dr Alka Seghal-Cuthbert, director of the race advocacy group  Don’t Divide Us . The executive summary offers a disturbing assessment of what Project Spire is doing and the way it has gone about it: Collectively, these [papers] argue that the Church of England’s programme of reparations is problematic for two reasons: (a) Firstly, it represents a departure by the Church Commissioners from their core duties, of which international reparatory justice is not one, however worthy or not it might be in the abstract; and a diversion of funds intended for the good of parishes to a purpose for which they were not intended. (b) Secondly, that this specific act of reparatory justice is poorly justified, historically uninformed and overall inadvisable. The reason for these claims is set out in the detailed problems with the Project’s approach: It is contended that Project Spire is based on:• insufficiently examined preconceptions and contentious moral and political theory,• flawed, narrowly selective, anachronistic historical understanding,• a defective process which: • embedded activism rather than balance,• paid insufficient regard to legal or ethical propriety, at the outset or later,• lacked transparency, true accountability, and breadth of reference,• failed to address authoritative critique,• failed to consider competing views about the principles of, and criteria for, reparation and failed to justify the project by reference to those principles and criteria,• was/is racially discriminatory in formulation and outcome,• failed to consider the risks of division and to the reputation and authority of the leadership of the Church in the eyes of its members and the wider public,• breached Charity Commission guidance on decision-making,• lacked due consideration of the legitimate prior claims on the money entrusted to the Commissioners – especially those of parishes, where preaching the Christian gospel and performing pastoral acts of charity most effectively take place and which should be the Commissioners’ highest priority. These are serious charges; if they have any basis in truth, then it means that those working with the Commissioners fund are responsible for serious misuse of funds. The first of the three essays , by Charles Wide, looks in detail at the process by which the project was developed, and the response to subsequent questions. In some ways, this feels like an odd place to start—until you recognise how important due process is, especially in relation to decision making in connection with substantial funds. Due process, including openness to questions, challenges, and alternative points of view, is the way in which we guard against the abuse of power, and it is something which has been perceived to be lacking in the Church of England leading to a serious erosion of trust. Wide meticulously traces the process by which the fund was initiated, including the wider questions about race both within the Church and in wider society. In general terms, Wide notes: It can therefore be seen how ingrained are the presuppositions and particular political stances amongst the Church elite and the way in which those presuppositions and stances are perpetuated and advanced by embedding activism in the Church’s processes. It can also be seen that, in terms of governance, there is substantial overlap between the institutional Church and the Church Commissioners (p 14). Wide then goes on to explore the claims made in relation to the Queen Anne’s Bounty, and its involvement in the South Sea Company, which is the primary way in which it is claimed that the Commissioners assets ‘benefitted’ from slavery. He notes the detailed  refutation of the claims of the Commissioners’ report by historians  Robert Tombs and Lawrence Goldman, who comment: However, while the connection of the Bounty with the slave trade was reprehensible and a proper cause of regret, it was certainly not the source of ‘a historic pool of capital’. The South Sea Company never made any profit from slave trading, and the Bounty did not derive any income from slave trading during the brief period when it held shares in the Company. On the contrary, its 1720 investment in shares made a disastrous loss, equal to 14 percent of its total portfolio. There was and is therefore no ‘historic pool of capital’ derived from slave trading from which reparations today could reasonably be paid. But, says Wide, these challenges have simply not been engaged with. The Board did not cause the research and its conclusions to be reviewed or subjected to any external critical scrutiny. Had it done so, the flaws,which have since been revealed, would have become apparent. Nor did it conduct any wider consultation. Furthermore, it seems that the Board leapt straight to proposing reparations, without pausing to consider the competing theological and secular arguments relating to a fraught, contentious issue, about which sincere Christians disagree (p 18). He then traces the failure to respond to questions and engage with critique, including the failure to give clear answers to questions asked in Synod. The most disturbing of these is the failure to address the question of the Commissioners’ charitable status, and the fact that the proposals are not legally allowable in the light of the Commissioners’ stated charitable aims. This has been important enough to  have been raised in Parliament, by Katie Lam MP : The funds that have been committed to projects via the Church of England’s reparations project are in fact for the upkeep of parish churches and the provision of salaries for the clergy. I know that the Second Church Estates Commissioner is dedicated to our parish churches and would not support anything unlawful, so will the hon. Lady please provide the grounds on which the Church Commissioners are authorised to allocate this money to aims for which it was not intended? What details can she share of the conversations that she has had with the Charity Commission to determine whether they can do this, as it seems to be unlawful? The second essay in the paper is by Nigel Biggar , and explores the wider arguments about the need for reparation, in which he engages with the recent arguments from Michael Banner. He offers a robust assessment of the complexities in all of these debates: History is replete with wrongs from which we now benefit. Little or nothing that we inherit is without historic taint. The present Church of England occupies cathedrals and churches seized by the state from Rome during the Reformation. Some of its present wealth was almost certainly squeezed out of overworked and under-rewarded medieval serfs and 19th century industrial workers. So, the question of which past wrongs to address and how best to address them is a complicated one that needs a careful answer. Yet, nowhere have the Church Commissioners felt it necessary to give one (p 35). In turn, he then explores the questions of African complicity in the slave trade, the nature of British slavery, the extent to which the British economy benefitted from slavery, the significance of abolition, the role of colonialism, and subsequent post-colonial developments. At one level, addressing these question can feel like cool detachment—but in fact Biggar is offering a response to the specific claims that have been made in support of the case for reparations. Some of his most striking material comes in the assessment of the ‘credit’ side of the debate—the role of Britain in suppressing the slave trade, and the relation of missionary work to the elimination of slavery. It is not true that slavery-suppression was simply a pretext for colonial expansion. While there were often multiple motives for that expansion, sincere humanitarian ones were certainly among them. The strength of abolitionist feeling in Britain in the early 1800s was so great that it did not relax after Parliament had been persuaded to abolish the slave trade and slavery within the British Empire; it went on to persuade the imperial government to adopt a permanent policy of trying to suppress both the trade and the institution worldwide… In addition to the diplomatic velvet glove, the British also deployed the naval hard fist. The Royal Navy deployed up to 13 per cent of its totalmanpower in the West Africa Station, in order to stop slave-trading with the Americas… Chaim Kaufmann and Robert Pape…“estimate the economic cost to British metropolitan society of the anti-slave trade effort at roughly 1.8 per cent of national income over sixty years from 1808 to 1867”.112 Although the comparisons are not exact, they do illuminate: in 2021 the UK spent 0.5 per cent of GDP on international aid and just over 2 per cent on national defence. Kaufmann and Pape conclude that Britain’s effort to suppress the Atlantic slave trade (alone) in 1807–67 was “the most expensive example [of costly international moral action] recorded in modern history” (p 43).   In May 2024, Justin Welby visited Zanzibar, and in a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral criticised missionaries for treating Africans as inferior, and claimed that ‘we must repent and look at what we did in Zanzibar.’ Alexander Chula, who taught in Malawi for three years, commented: I am curious to know who exactly the former Archbishop had in mind. [Anglican bishop John] Mackenzie’s successors gave everything they had to the region, and their graves litter Malawi, still venerated today. They committed to sharing the lives of local peoples and … approached their cultures with a curiosity and respect seldom matched by Western visitors today. The imputation that they treated Africans as inferior dishonours men who died precisely because they considered Africans as worthy of that sacrifice as anyone. The final essay in the report  is by Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, and she simply sets out how divisive is the kind of approach the Commissioners are taking to race and history. Many people find it hard to speak freely, to question or to raise criticisms about demands made in the name of social justice. Often it is because they fear the consequences of being labelled as racist (p 53). When the main message is that virtue and vice track skin colour rather than individual agency and intentionality, the results can only strengthen anti-democratic practices which divide us along lines of race. Worryingly, what we see in the calls for reparations today is not a call for justice to be applied, but the opposite. To accept the claims of the reparations lobby is to entrench the principle of injustice, or at least of partial justice. It is to entrench a vision of ourselves as fundamentally unequal and as such, represents a backwards step politically and morally (p 55). John Root, who has long experience in leading and planting multi-ethic churches, is not uncritical of the tone of the report,  but believes its key arguments are vital : ‘The Case Against Reparations: Why the Church Commissioners for England must think again’, by Charles Wide KC, the Rev’d Professor Lord Biggar and Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert’ is the first coherent and thorough push-back against the archiepiscopally inspired and Synod agreed ‘Project Spire’ to make reparatory payments to Caribbean or Caribbean-descended people for the evils of Britain’s importation and enslavement of African peoples in our Caribbean colonies. We do need to find a better way to address these issues; this was the speech I wrote for the debate on race in Synod, but was not called to speak: I am associate minister at a city centre church in a city which is highly ethnically mixed.  Around the time of the Black Lives Matter movement, we realized that the ethnic mix of those ‘up front’ did not match the ethnic mix of those ‘in the pews’. We knew change had to happen.  So we listened, we observed, and we encouraged. We now have a very diverse group of leaders (you can check online); we have welcomed refugees and asylum seekers from Hong Kong, from Iran, from central America in particular. Our clergy team is white, black, Chinese, and Chinese American. In our services on Sundays we often have readings in four languages. We have a Spanish-speaking pastor funding through central funds. Last Sunday the sermon wasn’t even in English! We celebrate our diversity and unity in Christ and we stand against racism wherever we find it. But we did it without ‘deconstructing whiteness’. We did it without using the language of ‘GMH’. We did it without specifying quotas. Rather, we did it by being captured again by  the biblical vision of diversity  we find in  Acts 13, in Rom 16, and of course particularly Rev 7.9  (all the answers are found in the book of Revelation).   Our current course is damaging, divisive, and will not deliver. Lord Boating talked about theology; the theology we currently have in place is deeply damaging. The Formularies of the Church are claimed to be ‘inherently racist’. Taking the gospel to Africa is described as Afrophobic. This will not do—and it will not deliver what is needed. The bishop of Dover is right: We need to take action, but we need to do it in a better way.   Finding a better way is now imperative for the Commissioners themselves. And it is deeply worrying that Synod and other bodies in the Church have not been able to ask effective questions about this. In his introduction, Tony Sewell makes an urgent plea: The Church of England’s leadership wished to find a way to turbocharge itself to the top of the race agenda. What better way than to offer an arbitrary figure like 100 million in reparations and link this to slavery. No one, from the Archbishop of Canterbury down, had the moral courage to stand up to the vagaries of the ‘diversity and inclusion’ propaganda. In many ways I have seen the way that activists have distorted the facts around transatlantic slavery to build careers, hustle grants and seek false compensation. This has been bolstered by universities, school curriculum and diversity agendas. Similarly, the Church of England avoids the deeper reflection required and has dived into the river, desperate to be seen as an institution that has been baptised and cleansed from the sins of institutional racism.   END

By Dr. Marianne Leeds Special to VIRTUEONLINE www.virtueonline.org April 9, 2025     Welby did not read Theology at Cambridge. He studied Law in year 1, and modern history in years 2 and 3. He graduated with a second-class degree in Modern History in 1978.   He went from Cambridge to a job in the City and from there to work in the oil industry.   Sometime later he was drawn into Alpha, which was and is very much an upper-class phenomenon, a theology-lite social circle, and from there decided to seek ordination.   He went on to train at Cranmer Hall, Durham, in 1989, and studied theology there for two years, graduating with an MA in 1991.   While he was there, he came very firmly under the influence of the college principal, another Evangelical public schoolboy named Ian Cundy, who saw himself as some kind of management guru, which clearly appealed to the former oil executive Justin Welby. Evangelical theology and gospel ministry gave way to delusions of a management revolution in the Church of England, and Welby went to Coventry Diocese (where the bishop was another Old Etonian) to be a curate at first, then Vicar of a parish while spending much of his time at Coventry Cathedral promoting its Reconciliation Ministry, based on the bombing of Coventry Cathedral during the war.   It is clear that he retained very close links with Cundy, who became Bishop first of Lewes in Sussex, and then Bishop of Peterborough, where he set out to implement his management plans for the Church of England, which he called “Setting God’s People Free” – free from clergy, parishes and church life as people know it in England. He also produced a version for the House of Bishops and set about persuading his colleagues to adopt it elsewhere.   Perhaps the most enthusiastic adopter was his disciple from Durham, who was suddenly and astonishingly catapulted into office as ABC, despite lacking any significant experience as a bishop, or any higher qualification in theology – but with a plan to revolutionize the Church of England with his own management strategy. Ian Cundy died in 2009, but his mantle had been literally handed on to Welby, who inherited his cope and mitre and other robes and wore them throughout his time in office.   Welby was a close associate of several ordained city figures, including the now disgraced Paula Vennells, a part time minister in charge of the Post Office. They came up with a plan to reinvent the House of Bishops by creating a talent stream of clergy candidates who displayed management rather than theological prowess, to be appointed as bishops, including senior people from other professions who it was thought could switch from a secular role to being a bishop, such as Sarah Mullally, now Bishop of London, former Chief Nursing Officer for England.   At the same time, he remained clearly under the influence of Cundy, and eventually a proposal called Vision & Strategy was presented by Welby and the current ABY to the General Synod, not for approval but as a fait accompli, in which the historic parish system would be left to wither on the vine, with its resources progressively transferred to high profile HTB/Alpha style plants around the country. Significant amounts of money which should have been funding the parish ministry across the country were handed over to unicorn projects, many of which spent the money but failed to flourish once it was gone forever. The impact on the dioceses and parishes of the Church of England has been disastrous, with many churches having to close their doors, or share one priest among many churches.   The combination of Welby’s manager-bishops (few if any competent at management, and even fewer having actually read theology) together with the Cundy program for the demolition of parish ministry has been a long nightmare for the Church of England, and one which will continue long into his enforced retirement, with many of those he appointed still actively setting the Church free of clergy, places of worship and of basic theology. He will be remembered for his disastrous handling of the largest safeguarding failure in the Church of England’s history, set out in the Makin Report. But his attempt to remake the Church of England in the image of his former college principal has been the greatest failure of his time in a great office for which he was always ill-equipped from the beginning.”     ChatGPT:   Justin Welby (the Archbishop of Canterbury) and Lord Stephen Green (former chairman of HSBC and former UK Minister of State for Trade and Investment) have a longstanding personal and professional connection.   Their Relationship: · Both men worked together in the oil industry in the 1980s. Specifically, they overlapped at Elf Aquitaine (now part of TotalEnergies), where Welby worked before entering the priesthood. · Later, their paths crossed again in the City of London. Stephen Green was a senior figure in banking (HSBC), while Welby was involved in ethical investment and financial ethics through his work in the Church and its financial oversight bodies. · Welby has publicly spoken of Green as a friend and mentor, particularly during his transition from the corporate world into Christian ministry. · Green, being both a banker and an Anglican priest (he was ordained while working at HSBC), embodied the intersection of faith and finance — something that resonated with Welby’s own journey.   Context of Their Public Association: · Their relationship came under scrutiny around 2012-2013 when HSBC (under Green’s leadership) faced criticism over money-laundering scandals. Welby was asked about his connection to Green but defended the idea that ethical business leadership was possible, even in banking. · Green wrote extensively about ethics in business, notably in his book  “Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World” . Welby, as Archbishop, has continued to campaign for ethical practices in the financial sector, possibly shaped in part by conversations with Green.

By Rev. Dr. Christopher Landau Premier Christian News 4 April 2025   Newcastle Cathedral has cancelled a planned speaking appearance by the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, citing concerns over his handling of safeguarding. Rev Dr Christopher Landau argues that instead of resorting to worldly tactics of de-platforming, the Cathedral should heed the New Testament’s radical call for love and unity   These are not normal times for the Church of England.   The resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury last November was unprecedented. Disproportionately ageing congregations, ongoing divisions over sexuality, and the shame and chaos of its handling of safeguarding, all point to an institution facing profound, even existential challenges.   And now, there is a rash of examples of various kinds of disinvitation or de-platforming which, I fear, only risk deepening the wounds which already exist.   The latest example involves the decision of the Dean and Chapter of Newcastle Cathedral to revoke an invitation to the Archbishop of York.   The Archbishop in question - the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell - is an evangelist at heart, and over the coming months is touring the cathedrals of the north of England to share insights about the Lord’s Prayer. It is hardly a contentious initiative. And yet Newcastle Cathedral has decided to de-platform the Archbishop, cancelling his planned appearance in September over his handling of safeguarding.   In a statement to the Church Times, the Dean of Newcastle, the Very Revd Lee Batson, is quoted saying that he was “deeply proud of the Cathedral’s ongoing ministry to those who have suffered abuse in their lives. It was this that informed the unanimous decision made solely by the Dean and Chapter to inform the Archbishop that we will not be hosting him as part of his Lord’s Prayer tour. This decision was made independently by the Cathedral’s governing body and applies specifically to this event”.   END

Florida Diocese Tries 3rd time to elect Bishop // Nigeria Worst Christian Killing Field // 1 in 12 Christians Face Deportation “No man preaches his sermon well to others if he does not first preach it to his own heart.” – John Stott But this is not the purpose of the church. It is not meant to be the whole of life or to meet all our needs in life. The church is not a sugar daddy whose purpose is to meet all our personal, social and vocational needs. – Karen Swallow Prior “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”  -- Abraham Kuyper We are now reaping the fruit of a Charismatic movement that has been so focused on subjective experience and encounter that it is void of some foundational and nonnegotiable doctrines of the faith. Have we idolized freedom from religion to the point of having no viable theological roots? --- Wanda Alger  “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” This is not the battle cry of a movement obsessed with winning. It is the confession of a faith willing to lose everything for the sake of Christ. --- Dietrich Bonhoeffer   The gospel does not promise power, prestige, or dominance—it promises a cross. And that is precisely what makes it so scandalous — teer hardy     Therefore, every shepherd, insofar as he is a shepherd among the sheep of Christ, should stand forth against all those who persecute him for the sake of God and his true word and also for the loyalty he has to his sheep, unmindful as to whether he must speak against the great Alexander, Julius, pope, king, princes or authority. This he should also do, not only when they contradict the word of God, but even if they overload their good folk too much and unreasonably with temporal burdens. – Ulrich Zwingli The family serves as a divinely commissioned institution for the transmission of faith. Families are not social constructs. They are essential vessels for passing down religious beliefs and practices. When family life weakens—due to declining birth rates, increased divorce rates, and cultural shifts away from ­honoring traditional family values—­religious belief also suffers. – Mary Eberstadt With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. -- Psalm 91:16 Dear Brothers and Sisters,                                                 www.virtueonline.org                                                                                         April 4, 2025   We’re living amid the largest and fastest shift in U.S. history, according to demographers.   Forty million Americans have left the church in the last 25 years. Many other Western countries have already seen similar declines, notably the UK, Canada and Western Europe. Furthermore, Islam is on the rise, and if things get out of control in the Middle East with Iran and Israel, we could see World War III. But that’s not the only challenge, according to some. After the fall of Christendom, believers in Western countries now face a strange mixture of apathy and antagonism toward the gospel. Many of our neighbors’ view Christianity as yesterday’s news but also as the source of today’s problems.   There is much truth to this. Hypocrisy now figures large in peoples’ minds when they think of the church. The sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy of all ranks with young men, some of them ordinands, and talk of the Lavendar mafia in the Vatican only increases cynicism. Is it any wonder that the RCC is experiencing declining membership in historically Catholic strongholds like Europe and North America and robust growth in specific parts of the world, particularly Africa and parts of Asia.   The same could be said of the Anglican Communion. Western Anglicanism is rapidly declining, while the Global South is exploding with evangelistic zeal and church growth.   The conservative Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest protestant denomination, reported some 700 pastors caught up in sexual infidelity, mostly with women. A dozen or more mega church pastors have lost jobs, some are going to jail for sexual misbehavior with underage girls. The Episcopal Church has seen a rapid rise in unreported sexual abuse cases. You can read a very comprehensive piece by Anglican Watch on bishop failure here: https://www.anglicanwatch.com/episcopal-priest-richard-losch-goes-to-criminal-trial-on-april-8-while-national-church-continues-its-refusal-to-hold-bishops-accountable/   The list goes on.   Here in the West the church has tied itself to politics, left and right, so why bother with church if you can get it all from The New York Times or social media. Just lie in bed pick up your iPad and listen to some influencer while sipping coffee.   I am involved in a new church plant and it is hard work. People come and go and we never see them again. We write letters, visit, make phone calls, send emails and texts…nothing. I talk to our young Hispanic pastor and while he acknowledges the problem, he refuses to let it get him down. He is full of enthusiasm to make it work. He preaches up a storm each Sunday as though it was his last sermon. He will not be deterred. God bless him.   It is this writer’s belief that the real reason Christianity is dying in America and the West is because of the message. You can blame it on modernity, secularization, wokedom and more, but underneath it all is liberal Christianity and a neutered gospel that has totally failed. Watering down the gospel to fit the culture has not worked. Over time people walk away. One of the biggest mistakes was believing that if the church was gay friendly and theologically accommodating, homosexuals and lesbians would pour into the churches. It never happened. They never came. Churches just emptied faster. Waving flags, using inclusive language achieved nothing. It has shown to be the biggest con job played on the church this century. All the efforts to twist Scripture to make it appealing to a small group of pansexualists has not worked.   Of course, starting a church in upstate New York is not downtown Dallas. The north is not the south. Many do not understand that. The spiritual Mason-Dixon line which separates four U.S. states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia, stretches spiritually nationwide. There are dozens of evangelical churches in Dallas. Texas alone has 200 megachurches, there are less than a dozen in Philadelphia and some of those claims are dubious at best.   Efforts to start an ACNA parish to date have not been successful. An evangelical witness in Philadelphia, the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the second-largest city on the East Coast of the United States after New York City, is difficult to find.   Try starting a church in that environment and see how difficult it is. You need the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and the tenacity and stickability of an Abraham. This is a new challenge. A big challenge. And we don’t yet know what to do. It is profoundly ironic that we are living in the best of times with advances in medicine to keep us all living longer, but church wise we are dying on the vine.   One statistic that does come through is that evangelical churches that adhere to sound teaching and demand something of their attendees are stable and growing. That is good news. It is not uniform, but it says something about what a church can do in an age of skepticism if it sticks to the gospel.   *****   Brand new Barna data from their State of the Church initiative suggests that church attendance might be on the rise again in America. Church attendance is rebounding, but don’t uncork the champagne yet. Small improvements amplify over time. But are we out of the woods, probably not. Church attendance in the U.S. has increased to an estimated 32% in early 2025, marking an uptick after declining from 48% in 2009 to 28% in 2024. The average in-person attendance of churches that participated was 938 people. However, there are still challenges and declines in attendance. We should let the data inform us, but don’t let it drive us. You want to look at the numbers and realize God is moving and that there is still ministry to do. Revival is possible, but it’s not inevitable. Wise leaders learn how to manage the tension between naming reality and always holding hope.   *****   The big news coming from across the pond is the selection and election of the next Archbishop of Canterbury. For the moment it all seems pretty chaotic based on numerous reports.   The Church of England is one step closer to appointing its first female Archbishop of Canterbury now that the Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, has ruled himself out, said one report.    “Despite speculation in recent months, I have felt no sense of inner calling to be Archbishop of Canterbury. What has remained constant is God’s continued faithful call to serve the people and parishes of the wonderful diocese of Norwich, as well as the national and international environmental roles I have, all of which bring me much joy,” said Usher.   The road to Canterbury is therefore now open for the female front-runner, the Iranian-born Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani. Her chances of being appointed to Canterbury this autumn got a significant boost in January when the Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, ruled herself out in a television interview.   Bishop Francis-Dehqani became a diocesan bishop in 2021, seven years after the then new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, had managed to persuade General Synod to agree to women bishops.   But is she orthodox in faith and morals? In successive votes at General Synod since February 2023, she has consistently backed the introduction of services of same-sex blessings in parish churches.   Are the deep thinkers in the Church of England thinking what the impact this would have on the Global South if they elected a liberal woman archbishop? Probably not, and now you know why GAFCON and GSFA primates are distancing themselves from the Mother Church. This would be the final insult in their efforts to keep the door open to reconciliation.   *****   Welby wobbles again. He is gone but apparently not forgotten, though it is probably best if he had. The former Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview and dug himself a hole that only confirmed to most of us that his resignation was a good and necessary thing.   In a BBC interview on 30 March, Welby apologised: “I am so sorry for what I failed to do [and] for what the Church did do with John Smyth… I am so sorry that I did not serve the victims and survivors… as I should have done, and that’s why I resigned.”   If the former prelate hoped his self-abnegation might salvage what was left of his reputation, he was wrong. The response to the interview has mostly been anger at what many victims see as an attempt to shift the blame. Some continue to believe Welby is obscuring the extent to which he knew about Smyth’s abuse before 2013, given he had attended camps with Smyth in the 1970s.   All in all, Welby’s reign was a disaster; from pushing women bishops onto the church, to the LLF report ratifying same-sex unions; groveling before ancient shrines and sins; pushing reparations while his own churches couldn’t pay a living wage to its own vicars and so much more, while hammering Global South Primates for their refusal to get on board with sodomy, only weakened both himself and the office he held. It is unlikely to recover. You can read more here:   *****   The Rev. Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council was consecrated Bishop of the Diocese of Western Anglicans on March 29, 2025. The service took place at the Presbyterian Church of the Master. He was consecrated by three ACNA bishops: the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, Archbishop Emeritus of the ACNA; the Rt. Rev. Dr. Keith Andrews, now Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Western Anglicans; and the Rt. Rev. Eric Menees, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. Bishops from East Africa joined with ACNA bishops to celebrate the consecration and show the support that Bishop Phil has garnered from ministry partners across the globe. Bishop Onesmus Asiimwe, Bishop of the Diocese of North Kigezi, Uganda, brought greetings from the Church of Uganda. “We are here not just to support Bishop Phil but to strengthen our partnership for the sake of the Gospel,” he said.   *****   The new Archbishop of the ACNA, Steve Wood , told clergy and laity at a mission’s conference that his top priority is an “ongoing, intentional, personal Gospel fidelity” in the clergy and laity of our province. Also critical to the long-term growth and health of the ACNA: personal evangelism and leadership development. The archbishop is passionate to build healthy organizational structures, said one report.   When asked about the growth of his own parish, St. Andrew’s in Mount Pleasant, SC, the Archbishop emphasized sticking to the basics: “We preach Scripture, irrespective of our experience.”   On cooperative ministry relationships with those who’ve rejected historic Christian teaching: “Cooperative relationship is impossible without shared commitment to the Biblical, historical witness of the Christian faith. And   agreement on Biblical anthropology is absolutely necessary, said the archbishop.   Wood reminded his hearers that societal pressures to compromise the Gospel are nothing new. “It is precisely in those moments where we feel the tension that we are especially called to be faithful.”   *****   For those following the news on who is cancelling whom, it will come as no surprise that England is further down the turnpike in political correctness to cancelling and arresting people for views not sympathetic to the government, DEI and free speech.   Two cases in point. Six police offices in the county of Hertfordshire, England, approaching the front door of a house to arrest two parents . And what was their alleged crime?   Did they assault somebody? Did they steal something? Were they shoplifting? Did they ram their car into a crowded market? No. They complained about their local school in a parents’ WhatsApp group. Prior to being arrested by no less than six police officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary —which, like other police authorities across England, is struggling to solve burglaries, stop shoplifting and end a surge of violent crime—the parents had dared to question the process through which their local school was recruiting a headteacher and appeared critical of school governors in a WhatsApp group.   All this, apparently, “upset” a few teachers, governors and parents —all of whom, reflecting a much broader sickness that is now afflicting Western societies, chose to prioritize their ‘emotional safety’ and a few hurty words above the free speech and free expression that are the lifeblood of our supposed liberal democracy.   Allen and Rosalind Levine were then held by police officers in front of their scared and anxious young daughter before they were fingerprinted, searched and dumped in a police cell for eight hours.   They were then interrogated on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property —although the police would later conclude no further action should be taken.   Britain, once the home of individual liberty and free speech, or is it some kind of authoritarian regime like North Korea? Because recently it’s become hard to tell the difference between the two.   Britain is losing its way. We can all see it. We can all feel it. And we can no longer tell others we are living in a truly free society.   Then there is the case of a dear friend of mine who was kicked out of his church after 36 years because he preached a sermon on the wedding at Cana in Galilee. He had been a regular member of the preaching team since 1989. In his sermon he affirmed what God created at the beginning - the union of Adam and Eve in the Garden as man and wife.   “At that point, before the sermon ended, three people got up and walked out. At the end of the sermon, the woman leading the service, a lay woman who was the vicar’s right hand lady, said that she wanted to make clear that everyone was welcome at the church - implying gay or straight.  Well, nothing I had said contradicted that - I was just setting out the biblical and Anglican position- that’s all I had said.   “After three days I received an email saying that in view of my sermon I would be paused from the preaching team.   “Well, I took the view that I was called to be a preacher and teacher of God’s word and ordained as such. Though we had been members of that church for over 30 years and both our daughters had been married there, we decided to leave. I transferred my Permission to Officiate as a retired minister to another parish where I have since then preached once a month.”   *****   Just to totally confuse the faithful, the Bishop of Leicester Martyn Snow calls for an intercultural approach to LLF divisions in his new book, 'Can we imagine a future together'? Intercultural lessons for Living in Love and Faith’.   Bishop Snow is the lead bishop for the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process. Snow said: “Despite the great depths in our disagreements over Living in Love and Faith, I believe there is still a longing for unity among most of us in the Church of England.”   It should be noted that Martyn is an advocate for the LLF report being accepted in the church, even as the CEEC and other groups roundly repudiate any idea that the doctrine of marriage can be changed. This is a non-starter. T he opening analysis is that the booklet ‘offers little hope’ for faithful Anglicans.   An analysis of this book and his report can be found at Anglican Futures here: https://acl.asn.au/bishop-martyn-snow-responds-to-what-kind-of-future-awaits-the-faithful/   *****   The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has a resource to guide Christian voters on prayer, political engagement, and the legal responsibilities of churches during the campaign period. The general election will be held on Monday, April 28, 2025,read the announcement in the parliamentary speaker’s press release.   Prime Minister Mark Carney assumed leadership following the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Jan. 6. Reports indicate the snap election was called to rally public support in response to trade tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.   In response, the EFC has published a brochure titled Faith, Voting and Political Engagement, which provides guidance to Canadian Christians in the lead-up to the election and emphasizes the importance of prayer.   “When Christians vote, we actively seek the good of those around us and our country (Jer. 29:5-6),” reminds the EFC brochure. “Voting is one way Christians can contribute to society and the public good. Our participation in discussions about public policy and politics, like our engagement in all of life and community, is part of our witness.”   The EFC encourages prayer for candidates, voters, elected officials, and the nation as a whole, referencing Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”   *****   Almost 3 in 10 Americans identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” That in itself isn’t news; the proportion has ticked up for decades, though it has leveled off in the past few years. But what has this shift meant for the country – especially its politics?   People often assume that fewer religious voters means more votes for liberal candidates. But that’s not necessarily the case: Nonreligious Americans are diverse, and so are their attitudes toward religion and politics.   David Campbell and Geoffrey Layman, political scientists at the University of Notre Dame, wanted to understand who these Americans really are. Their research found differences between three distinct groups that carry over to activities like volunteering, political giving and voting.   The group they call “Secularists,” for example, are disproportionately young, white and liberal. “Nonreligionists,” too, are often young and white – but more “up for grabs” at the ballot box.   *****   Third time lucky? Maybe . The Diocese of Florida Standing Committee is calling for the election of a diocesan bishop. It is nearly two years after the last election was negated amid divisions within the diocese under the former bishop and church wide concerns about the election process and the bishop-elect. This will be the third effort to elect a new bishop to succeed Bishop Samuel Johnson (John) Howard, who retired in October 2023.   Florida’s standing committee announced March 31 that it has scheduled a special meeting of the Florida Diocesan Convention for June 14 to adopt a nominating process, rules and procedures for seeking and electing the diocese’s ninth bishop. The standing committee’s tentative timeline would allow for an election in late summer or early fall 2026 and the bishop-elect’s consecration in early 2027, reports TLC.   The Rev. Charlie Holt failed twice to get elected as its bishop in 2022, because he failed to pass the smell test over homosexual marriage. Holt, who is conservative on the issue, offered to allow outside bishops to perform the unbiblical same-sex acts. He was deep-sixed both times.   After Holt’s first election in May 2022, objectors made 38 allegations of irregularities in the election, including the absence of a quorum of two-thirds of all canonically resident clergy. A Court of Review  found merit  in some of the objections three months later, and Holt withdrew his acceptance of the nomination shortly afterward, TLC reported. Other objectors said there was evidence of “a pattern and practice of discrimination” against LGBT clergy and those who opposed Bishop Howard’s views in the granting of canonical residency. Florida’s Standing Committee  pushed back  hard against the decision, claiming that the Court of Review misunderstood the canons and did not carefully investigate the claims of alleged discrimination. All to no avail. Now they will try again. As I have said repeatedly nothing will stop the pansexual steamroller and if the laity truly object and don’t roll over, they will have to try again. Usually, the laity grow tried of the fight and cave. Better to have a pro-gay bishop than none at all. We shall see.   *****   PERSECUTION is a global problem.  Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern (ICC), who has spent more than two decades fighting for religious freedom, says the crisis is worsening.   “The main killing ground for Christians isn’t North Korea — it’s Nigeria. Radical Islamists have driven Christians out of the north, pushing them further into the middle belt, which is the agricultural heartland. Militants raid villages, killing and displacing entire communities. It’s a stealth jihad, a massive land grab.”   Despite international condemnation, the Nigerian government’s response has been, at best, lackluster, he said. “They claim they can’t find the attackers, but it’s a deep-state issue,” King explained. “The security apparatus is controlled by radical elements, and the military often turns a blind eye — or worse, intervenes against Christian self-defense efforts.”   Beyond Nigeria, King warned of a broader crisis sweeping across Africa’s Sahel region. Islamist militancy has taken root in the area, rendering entire swaths of territory ungovernable.   “It’s like ISIS has taken over a whole region,” King said. “And because these areas are so remote, there’s little that can be done to stop it.”   Beyond Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has also seen horrific violence against Christians, he said. Recently, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist extremist group linked to the Islamic State, beheaded 70 Christians after days of captivity and terror.   *****   Peirong Lin, a deputy secretary at the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) , likes to joke that evangelical is the most polarizing word in the world.   “Yet that is exactly what we are trying to unite around,” she told Christianity Today, “the euangelion, the Good News, the gospel, and what it looks like in different countries and contexts.”   Now the global organization of national and regional alliances representing 600 million evangelicals is looking for one person to help bring everybody together. The international council that oversees the WEA is stressing the need for unity as the search for a new secretary general gets underway.   *****   Roughly 1 in 12 Christians in the US are at risk of deportation or live with someone who is, according to a new study by the Center for the Study at Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. More than 1 in 18 of the country’s evangelicals could be impacted by mass deportations.   Among the president’s many executive orders on the first day of his second term, he signed a border-security measure directing agencies to focus on “removing promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of Federal law.” The language echoed Trump’s earlier pledges to deport all undocumented immigrants.   Taken to its full extent, that would entail rounding up and shipping off an estimated 14 million people—a population the size of Pennsylvania. – H/T CT   *****   Harvard Divinity School announced it was pausing its Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative, a program that focused on Israel-Palestine as a case study. On Wednesday (April 2), it cut the last remaining position in the initiative. Hilary Rantisi, the associate director of the program, said she was told her position will not be renewed. She is also the sole Palestinian American staff member at the divinity school. Her last day is at the end of June. She did not comment further.   ***** We end on a high note with a first-class story on the retiring Bishop of the Arctic, David Parsons . It is written by a long-time journalist and friend Julia Duin. She traces the personal and ministerial life of Parsons over several decades. It is a heartfelt tribute to a good and godly man who not only preached the gospel in a very difficult situation but constantly and consistently resisted the liberal and progressive siren call of the Anglican Church of Canada into his diocese. You can read it here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/a-bishop-of-the-arctic-says-goodbye   *****   I have been given an opportunity to attend the consecration of the new Bishop of North Africa in Tunisia . There will be many archbishops, bishops and clergy attending. I could use some financial support to make this trip possible and to assist the new bishop.   Please consider a tax-deductible donation. A PayPal donation link can be found here: here: http://www.virtueonline.org/support.html   If you are more inclined with old fashioned checks, you can send your donation to:   VIRTUEONLINE                                                                          P.O. BOX 111                                  Shohola, PA 18458   Warmly in Christ, David   My Substack on the Middle East continues to grow. It is drawing a lot of attention across the globe. You can access my Substack here: https://davidvirtue2.substack.com/

(RNS) — Christian Smith’s research shows traditional religion isn’t just declining. It’s culturally obsolete.   “Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America” by Christian Smith.  Jana Riess April 3, 2025   (RNS) — Traditional religion may be destined for the walls of the Cracker Barrel, a space filled with nostalgic advertisements for products of yesteryear, like Victrolas, lace antimacassars or butter churns. All things, in other words, that have been rendered obsolete by modern life.   According to social scientist and author Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, “obsolete” describes the situation facing traditional organized religion in the United States. The title of his new book even puts its cultural expiration in the past tense: “Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America.”   The book, based on research that includes more than 200 qualitative interviews, will be released by Oxford University Press on Tuesday (April 8).   “We almost always use the word ‘decline’ when we talk about if things aren’t going well for religion,” Smith said in a Zoom interview with RNS. “And decline is a good word. But what it’s descriptive of is organizational matters and individual religiousness. Organizations can have decline in membership or adherence, attendance, financial giving. That’s decline — it’s measurable.”   His book, however, chronicles something bigger and harder to pin down. It’s about all the cultural changes that precipitated those declines and made organized religion so much less relevant in people’s lives.   “The culture was formed by these big institutional, technological, economic, geopolitical, military, etc., changes,” he said. Those changes include the rise of individualism, the association of religion with violence after 9/11, the third sexual revolution and more.   Smith is quick to point out that culturally obsolete things can still be quite useful for some people. He has DVDs and CDs in his house that he’s not planning to get rid of. But most younger people rely entirely on streaming services for their movies and music, making DVDs and CDs obsolete for them.   There’s a lesson there. No, religion hasn’t been supplanted by a spiffy new technology — though Smith’s book does detail 10 ways the internet “corroded” religion, including by reducing people’s attention spans and diminishing their willingness to engage in in-person communities that come with significant time demands. Nor was there an intentional plot to derail religion, with secularists setting out to cut it down.   Instead, the social changes that have made religion obsolete were “long-term, highly complex and unintended,” Smith said. Delayed marriage, reduced childbirth and voluntary childlessness have all chipped away at the cultural power of religion, but eroding religion was never the aim of those social changes. People embraced them because they felt their lives were better because of them.   There have also been geopolitical changes, such as the end of the Cold War and the neoliberal economic policies that made people more devoted to their careers in order to stay competitive. Both indirectly damaged religion. The end of the Cold War, Smith writes, “was a jolt that helped to trigger the cultural avalanche that plowed over religion in the next two decades.” Americans who had been brought up to believe that what made us better than the Soviets was that they were godless communists suddenly lost their certainty that being American meant being Christian.   Another factor was the rise of religious scandals, particularly the Catholic Church’s priest sex abuse crisis and the evangelical world’s multiple scandals with pastors who covered up sexual assault and were accused of embezzlement. Even though only a small minority of clergy was involved in those scandals, they “polluted” the name of religion in the eyes of millions, Smith found in his research. In this way, religion has had a hand in digging its own grave.   Smith called this convergence of factors “a perfect storm.” All these elements and more create a zeitgeist that is, if not hostile to religion, not particularly receptive to it.   “It’s very generational,” he said. “This is especially post-boomers, especially millennials. Within the culture for that generation, religion was just kind of discredited or polluted, or it didn’t add up.”   Some people within traditional religion may see the book as being down on religion. That’s not the case though, Smith said. The sociologist’s nearly two dozen previous books have chronicled the highs and lows of religion in America for many years. His National Study of Youth and Religion project researched the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers into emerging adulthood. His book “Passing the Plate” explored the state of charitable giving in America and considered what might be possible if Christians donated more of their money to worthy causes. And Smith is himself a Christian. He grew up Presbyterian and converted to Roman Catholicism about 15 years ago.   In sum, he’s not pining to see religion on the walls of the Cracker Barrel.   “I don’t have an anti-religious agenda in my scholarship at all,” he said. “I’m a sociologist, so I’m here to describe the world as best I can — what’s happening and why — without cheering it on or without condemning it.”   Now, his job is to explain that shift as best he can using research. While religious people are sometimes defensive or appalled by his message about religion’s obsolescence, other times they receive the news with relief. Presenting his data to audiences, he’s encountered pastors “who just think they’ve failed, like they did a bad job” if their churches aren’t growing, he said.   “I said, ‘It’s not you. There’s something bigger going on here,'” he said. The pastors found it liberating to realize their church’s decline wasn’t only happening to them, or it wasn’t because of something they’d done or failed to do.   “If people don’t have an understanding of those social contexts, it’s very easy for them to personalize it and oftentimes blame themselves,” Smith said.   Smith won’t make a full-on prediction about where religion is headed next, except that just because traditional religion has become obsolete doesn’t mean secularism has triumphed.   “It’s not a binary between religion and the secular,” he said. It’s not the kind of “zero sum game,” but is more nuanced. Most Americans still believe in God, even in younger generations, he added.   Rather, he sees religion morphing into other channels. Interest in the supernatural remains very high in the U.S., which is the topic of another book he’s working on. And he sees an interesting “re-enchantment” happening outside of religious institutions as people explore neopaganism, healing crystals and the like.   “As people left religion, or grew up in a world in which religion was obsolete, they became attracted to this re-enchanted culture. And there’s lots of different entry doors into it,” he said.   VOL: Why have denominations lost their relevance? They jettisoned the Gospel for everything else but the Gospel.

By Donna Birrell PREMIER CHRISTIAN NEWS April 4, 2025   A bishop who was instrumental in drawing up guidelines around women’s ministry in the Church of England has now said the provision helps to “reinforce” the “unequal and iniquitous gendered culture of the current Church of England”.   Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett, who is the Bishop of Croydon, was speaking at the launch of a campaign by Women and the Church (WATCH). It wants to end the special arrangements which were put in place after the vote to allow women bishops in 2014. The provision, known as the ‘Five Guiding Principles’ includes pastoral and sacramental dispensation for those who, for theological reasons, can't receive the ministry of female bishops or priests.   Bishop Mallett said many female clergy still experience 'gendered micro-aggressions' in the church.   Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH, agrees. She told Premier: “It's still permissible for churches to say ‘no’ to having a woman as their vicar. It's still permissible for churches to say ‘no they won't have a woman preside over the sacrament’. It's still permissible for church to say that they need a special bishop, someone who's neither a woman, nor a man who has ordained a woman.   “We’re also continuing to teach theology in some churches, which says that God created men to be in authority over women. So all this is still within the spectrum of teaching and practice of the Church of England.”   According to WATCH, one in twelve bishops in the Church of England do not fully accept women as priests or church leaders. Only four out of the last 14 diocesan bishops appointed have been women.   Rev Oborne said WATCH is hoping to bring a motion to the next meeting of the Church’s General Synod in which she hopes a conversation will be had about whether the current arrangements are “fit for perpetuity or whether or not we need to find a good way to bring them to an end."   She added it was a call to bring to an end “the discrimination, sexism, and exploitation of women in our Church”.   Asked whether female clergy are subject to additional challenges within the church, Rev Oborne said: “It’s the experience of every woman in the Church, both lay and ordained. Some of them are micro aggressions and some of them are macro aggressions.   “There are a lot of problems that are being swept under the carpet, and it's time for us to have a frank conversation about this.   “We have effectively a church within a Church. We're not really one Church, because we've got a separate church for those who don't accept the theology of ordaining women. We used to be a Church where all clergy were in communion with each other.   “So I think this affects not just women, but it affects men as well.”   In a message to the 'Not Equal Yet' conference at which the campaign was launched, the Area Bishop of Kingston, Dr Martin Gainsborough, said “It is important that we have this conversation as a Church. The question we need to wrestle with is how do we ensure a future in which women and men can flourish equally in the Church. We have some way to go.”   VOL. Based on what happened in The Episcopal Church, sooner or later, those who hold contrary views on the ordination of women will be told to conform or go. A motion will be presented and passed at Synod that women (and homosexuals and lesbians) be accepted to all orders of ministry and it will then be a done deal. If you don’t like it, you can leave and join another Anglican jurisdiction or simply resign. The consciences of Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals be damned.

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

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