The archbishops threatened to cancel a fringe event on sexual identity transformation — then backed down halfway. What remains is a Church willing to hear the Gospel only in private. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I July 9, 2026 The Church of England has found a new use for safeguarding: silencing the testimony of Christians whose lives have been changed by Jesus Christ. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York — Sarah Mullally and Stephen Cottrell — threatened to cancel a General Synod fringe event in York examining how the Labour government's proposed conversion practices ban could criminalize Christian testimony, prayer, and pastoral care. After media exposure, they backed down — but only halfway. The private meeting may proceed on July 13. The public exhibition stand has been banned. Consider what that split decision actually says: the stories of men and women transformed by the power of God may be whispered behind closed doors to invited guests, but they must not be seen by the wider Synod. Testimony is now contraband. The Anatomy of a Cancellation The fringe event, “People Change: Sexual Identity Transformation,” is sponsored by Rebecca Hunt, a lay Synod member for Portsmouth Diocese and a lawyer with the Christian Legal Centre. Its speakers are three people the progressive wing of the Church would very much prefer did not exist. Matthew Grech is a Maltese Christian who was dragged through three years of criminal proceedings — the first international prosecution of its kind — for the offense of sharing his testimony on the radio. He was acquitted. He did not undergo “conversion therapy.” He became a Christian, and his desires changed. That, apparently, is the scandal. Dr. Mike Davidson, chairman of the International Foundation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice, was de-banked by Barclays following activist pressure that included multiple death threats. Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, rounds out the panel. The campaign against them began on June 27, when the Rev. Dr. Charlie Bączyk-Bell, a married gay priest and Synod member, took to social media to declare it “genuinely disgusting and astonishing that this trash is being given a space” at the Synod fringe. “Trash.” A fellow Synod member's Christian testimony, dismissed as garbage. Then came the letter — 82 Synod members, organized by the Rev. Robert Thompson, a West Hampstead vicar — invoking the Fringe Meeting Guidelines and demanding to know whether “safeguarding assessments” had been undertaken. For good measure, Thompson copied his correspondence to those responsible for Synod governance, safeguarding, the bishops of London, and — note this well — “those with interest in the Church's relationship with Parliament and government.” The threat was not even thinly veiled. The Archbishops duly wrote to Mrs. Hunt warning that the event could be contrary to the ethos of the Church of England and its safeguarding guidance. Safeguarding as a Weapon Let us be clear about what safeguarding is for. It exists to protect children and vulnerable adults from predators — a purpose the Church of England has failed at spectacularly and repeatedly, as the Makin Review and the wreckage of the Welby years attest. It does not exist to protect Synod members from hearing testimonies they find theologically inconvenient. Toby Young of the Free Speech Union named this tactic precisely: citing safeguarding concerns to silence people you disagree with is a scandalous abuse of a system designed to protect children from abusers. The Church that could not safeguard the victims of John Smyth has now discovered the vigor to “safeguard” its Synod from three Christians with microphones. Mrs. Hunt's response cut to the heart of it. The Living in Love and Faith process, she noted, changed no doctrine. The Church of England's teaching remains that sexual intimacy is reserved for the marriage of one man and one woman. The speakers at her event are not dissenting from the Church's doctrine; their opponents are. Yet it is the orthodox who must submit to “safeguarding assessments” while the revisionists write letters to Parliament. The Shadow of the Bill None of this is happening in a vacuum. Labour's Draft Conversion Practices Bill is before Parliament, and its definitions are breathtakingly broad. The government has described conversion practices as “any efforts to change, modify or suppress a person's sexual orientation or gender identity” — in any setting, religious ones included. Even the Church's own bench of bishops can see the danger. The Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, told the House of Lords he had serious concerns about the Bill's failure to distinguish harmful practices from “perfectly acceptable practices of pastoral care and indeed prayer,” warning of a significant negative impact on legitimate spiritual care. The Evangelical Alliance and The Christian Institute have said existing law already covers genuine abuse. Matthew Grech's Malta ordeal is the proof of concept. Under a broadly drafted law, a radio testimony became a criminal prosecution. The York fringe event exists precisely to ask whether England is about to repeat Malta's error — and the Archbishops' first instinct was to prevent the question from being asked. Mullally's First Test This is Sarah Mullally's first York Synod as Archbishop of Canterbury, and the omens are poor. Both she and Cottrell voted for same-sex blessings in February 2023; their sympathies were never in doubt. What was in doubt was whether they would allow the Synod fringe — by definition the space for views that cannot get a hearing in formal debate — to remain free. The answer: only partially, and only after public exposure forced their hand. On Monday, Synod will debate a Private Member's Motion on sexuality. The fringe row is the opening skirmish of what promises to be a bruising session. The revisionist wing has now demonstrated its method: a social media denunciation, a letter with the right signatures, an invocation of safeguarding, a copy to Westminster. The machinery of cancellation, consecrated. The Gospel on Trial Strip away the procedure and the press statements, and one question remains: can the Church of England still tolerate the claim that Jesus Christ changes lives? That is not a fringe question. It is the Gospel itself. “And such were some of you,” Paul wrote to the Corinthians. “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Every conversion is a conversion practice. Every baptism testifies that people change. A Church that permits that testimony only in private rooms, away from public view, has already conceded the argument. The Archbishops did not merely mishandle a fringe event. They told the watching world which stories the Church of England is now ashamed of. The empty pews will take note. David W. Virtue, DD, is the founder and editor of VirtueOnline, the largest orthodox Anglican online news service. He has covered Anglican and Episcopal Church affairs for more than 35 years. Some 21,000 stories can be accessed at www.virtueonline.org

The Anglican Church of Canada has produced a 66-page liturgy for euthanasia. It is the most theologically damning document the Communion has seen in a generation. By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I July 7, 2026 Picture the scene the Anglican Church of Canada has now scripted, rubric by rubric. A dying believer receives the Body and Blood of Christ. Prayers are said. A period of quiet reflection follows. And then, on cue — the liturgy itself makes provision for it — the medical team enters the room to administer the drugs that will stop the patient's heart. The chalice is cleared away so the syringe can take its place. This is not a hostile caricature. It is the plain choreography of "Pastoral Liturgies at the Time of Death in Contexts of Medically Assisted Dying," commended by the Council of General Synod in June 2026 for trial use wherever a diocesan bishop permits it, with feedback gathered until May 2027 and possible permanent adoption by General Synod in 2028. Here is the reading: The sacrament is then given with the following words. The body of Christ (given for you). The blood of Christ (shed for you). The following doxology may be said. Officiant All Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen. Let it be said plainly: this document is not an act of pastoral care. It is a complete inversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A GOSPEL TURNED UPSIDE DOWN The Gospel is the announcement that God in Christ entered death in order to destroy it. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death," Paul thunders in 1 Corinthians 15. Christ did not negotiate with the grave; he plundered it. Every Christian funeral for two thousand years has been preached in the teeth of death, not in partnership with it. What the Anglican Church of Canada has now produced is a liturgy in which the church walks a believer INTO the arms of the last enemy, hands folded, candles lit, and pronounces the ground holy. The document speaks of the moment of lethal injection in the language of "thin places" — that lovely Celtic image of the veil between heaven and earth grown gossamer. But the veil is not thin because heaven has drawn near. It is thin because a physician has been scheduled to tear it. Death remains what Scripture says it is: an enemy. A defeated enemy, yes — but defeated by Christ's dying and rising, not domesticated by a task force with a liturgical template. GETHSEMANE INVERTED The theological center of this document's corruption is found in its prayers of discernment. There, the person contemplating euthanasia is invited to see themselves in Jesus at Gethsemane, wrestling in the garden with a terrifying choice, and God is asked to "reveal your blessing... in these decisions." One hardly knows where to begin. Gethsemane is the precise moment in all of Scripture where the Son of God confronted an agonizing death — and surrendered his autonomy. "Not my will, but thine be done." The garden is where self-determination went to die so that we might live. To invoke Gethsemane as a warrant for choosing the hour of one's own death is not merely poor exegesis. It is exegesis standing on its head, blessing the very thing Christ refused. And note the sleight of hand. The document's introduction piously assures readers that the church is not blessing the choice of euthanasia itself — only the person. Thirty-five pages later, its own prayer asks God to bless the decisions. The authors could not sustain their own fiction for the length of their own booklet. PSALM 139 REWRITTEN AS A SUICIDE NOTE Worse still — and I do not use the word lightly — is the document's treatment of Psalm 139. This is the great psalm of the sovereignty of God over every human life: the God who knit us together in our mothers' wombs, who wrote all our days in his book before one of them came to be. It has been, for the entire pro-life movement, the charter text of human dignity from conception to natural death. The trial liturgies include a first-person "meditation" on this psalm in which the dying person muses whether ascending to heaven ahead of the body's own timing might itself be a path God has set before them. Here is what the meditation says on page 57: You set life in front of me. You did not remove obstacles but delighted in me finding my own way. You loved me and healed me over and over. You taught me to live well with the world and so you rejoiced in my community. You gave me hope. You lifted my spirit to the sunrise. And my darkness became your light. You called me to see your joy and to surrender. I am seeing my desire to fully surrender now, while I know my path. The psalm that declares our days are written by God is refashioned to suggest we may edit the final chapter ourselves. If there were a competition to find the one text in the Psalter least susceptible to a euthanasia reading, Psalm 139 would win it — and that is the text they chose. This is not interpretation. It is ventriloquism, forcing the Word of God to speak the words of the world. ABSOLUTION WITHOUT REPENTANCE, COMMUNION WITHOUT TRUTH The bedside rite provides for confession and absolution minutes before the lethal drugs are administered. Consider what this means. The universal tradition of the church — East and West, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant — has counted the deliberate taking of innocent life, including one's own, as grave sin. Here, absolution is pronounced upon a person who is not renouncing the act but is fully resolved upon it, with the church's minister standing by as facilitator. Absolution has always required contrition and the intention of amendment. This rite offers pardon for a deed not yet done and firmly intended — a sacramental absurdity that would have made the medieval indulgence-peddlers blush. Tetzel at least waited until the sin was committed. Then comes Holy Communion. The early fathers called the Eucharist the "medicine of immortality." In this liturgy it becomes the hors d'oeuvre to a homicide — administered, by design, immediately before the fatal dose. Even the Nunc Dimittis is pressed into service: the song of old Simeon, who waited upon the Lord's timing for years and departed only when God gave leave, is appointed for recitation as the physician prepares the drugs. Simeon waited. Canada schedules. THE ABDICATION DRESSED AS HUMILITY The document's authors announce that they do not intend to enter the ethical arguments about euthanasia or offer any moral judgment for or against it. They then supply sixty-six pages of prayers, anointings, blessings and eucharists for its performance. This will not do, and every first-year seminarian knows why: lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer is the law of belief. The church teaches by what it prays far more powerfully than by what it resolves. A church that writes prayers for the needle has made its moral argument; it simply lacks the courage to state it. The Prayer Book Society of Canada saw this clearly, declaring any such liturgy explicitly opposed to the doctrine and discipline enshrined in the 1962 Book of Common Prayer. They are right. You cannot liturgize what you will not defend. And there is a final cruelty buried in the guidance: clergy whose consciences forbid participation are instructed to ensure that another cleric is found. The objector must become the procurer. This is precisely the "effective referral" trap that has ensnared Canadian physicians, now imported into holy orders. THE CONTEXT: 80,000 DEAD AND COUNTING None of this occurs in a vacuum. Since legalization in 2016, Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying regime has killed some 80,000 people — roughly one in every twenty deaths in the nation. The program's boundaries expand relentlessly, with extension to those whose sole affliction is mental illness on the horizon, and documented cases of the poor, the disabled and the despairing steered toward death because care was too expensive or too slow. The state will pay to kill you free of charge; it makes no such promise about your dental work. Into this culture of death — the most permissive euthanasia regime in the Western world — the Anglican Church of Canada has spoken. And what it has said is: let us find suitable prayers. Contrast the early church. The Didache, written within living memory of the apostles, condemned the taking of innocent life without qualification. The first Christians rescued the exposed infants of Rome from the dung heaps and refused the empire's cheap deaths, and the pagan world marveled and was converted. The church grew because it would not kill, and would not bless killing. The Anglican Church of Canada is shrinking for the opposite reason, and cannot see the connection. WHERE ARE THE SHEPHERDS? Every diocesan bishop in Canada must now answer a question that admits no evasion: will you permit this rite in your diocese? Bishops of the Anglican Network in Canada and the wider Anglican realignment have long warned that the theological rot of the Canadian church did not stop at the blessing of sexual sin. Here is the proof. A church that lost the doctrine of creation in one generation has lost the doctrine of death in the next. The Global South and GAFCON, gathering their forces in the wake of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals' collapse, should take careful note: this is what the "walking together" model produces. While the Instruments of Communion call for three more years of discernment, Canada has discerned its way to sacralized suicide. To the faithful remnant in Canada — and they exist, in parishes and pews and not a few clergy — I say: do not despair, but do not be silent. Refuse this rite. Say so publicly. The ministry of the church at a deathbed is prayer, presence, and the honest proclamation that Jesus Christ has defeated death — not a benediction over its administration. The Great Physician heals. He does not hold the syringe. Any church that cannot tell the difference has ceased, in that moment, to be a church at all, and has become a chaplaincy to the culture of death — vested, candled, and utterly lost. The trial-use document may be read in full on the Anglican Church of Canada's website. Feedback from dioceses is being gathered until May 2027. The graphic was provided by an anonymous former Episcopal cleric which prompted LLM to create this image.

Nairobi-Cairo proposals kicked into the long grass as Canterbury establishment clings to control COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I July 6, 2026 Why are we not surprised? The 19th Anglican Consultative Council, meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, voted 72–8 on July 4 to leave the Archbishop of Canterbury's role as the spiritual and ecclesiastical figurehead of the Anglican Communion untouched. Delegates declined to adopt the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals — the most serious attempt in a generation to reckon with post-colonial reality — and called instead for three more years of “discernment and conversation.” Three more years! When the ecclesiastical establishment wants to kill something, it does not shoot it; it studies it to death. The Windsor Report, the Anglican Covenant, the “listening process,” Indaba — the graveyard of Anglican reform is littered with commissions, consultations and continuing conversations, and now the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals join them in the long grass. The ACC will not even take the matter up again until its next meeting in 2029, hosted by the Church of North India. By then the question may well have answered itself. Consider who was not in the room. Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda — provinces representing tens of millions of practicing Anglicans — again refused to attend, as they have for years. Sudan and Congo also sent no delegations. The 72–8 landslide was achieved because the opposition had already left the building. It is easy to win a vote on Canterbury's supremacy when the churches that reject Canterbury's supremacy are not present to cast one. The Episcopal Church's three delegates, needless to say, voted yes. WHAT WAS ACTUALLY REJECTED The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals were no revolutionary manifesto. Drafted by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), chaired by the Church of England's own Bishop Graham Tomlin, they would have redefined membership in the Communion so that provinces needed only a “historical connection” to the See of Canterbury rather than being “in communion with” it — an honest acknowledgment that full communion no longer exists. A supplement issued in March went further, proposing that Canterbury's ministry be shared among five regional primates, and that the archbishop no longer serve as president of the ACC. Modest. Overdue. A recognition that a global church of some 85 million people, roughly 80 percent of whom now live in the Global South, should no longer be presided over by the state church of a post-Christian island. Even that was too much for Belfast. Instead, the ACC affirmed the status quo, adopting an amended resolution declaring “widespread agreement” that communion with the See of Canterbury remains vital to Anglican identity. When members challenged the accuracy of the word “widespread” — and how could they not, with five provinces absent and a dozen more in impaired communion — the effort to strike it was defeated by more than two to one. The establishment does not merely hold power; it insists you affirm the fiction while it does so. A SLAP IN THE FACE Make no mistake: this was a power grab dressed up as patience. The vast majority of the Anglican Communion is orthodox in faith and morals, while the West has capitulated to the world and the flesh, specifically in the arena of human sexuality. The Church of England has been blessing same-sex couples since 2023 in open defiance of Lambeth Resolution 1:10 and the plain teaching of Scripture. The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) responded with its Ash Wednesday Statement declaring it could no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as first among equals. The embrace of pansexuality marked the end of the Communion as we knew it. The Windsor Report changed nothing then; three more years of “discernment” will change nothing now. Leaving the Archbishop of Canterbury's role untouched is the height of hubris and a slap in the face of Global South archbishops and bishops, many of whom face persecution on a daily basis, whose people face starvation, displacement and death for the name of Christ. They asked for a seat at the head of the table they now overwhelmingly fill. They were told to wait — again. There were voices in Belfast who saw it clearly. The Rev. Berthier Lainirina of the Province of the Indian Ocean warned the council that without structural change, his province and other orthodox churches might conclude they no longer have any place in the Communion at all, lamenting that delegates preferred to pretend all was well when it manifestly is not. A Kenyan lay delegate, Ambrose Otieno Weda, pleaded with members to reason together rather than walk away and leave empty chairs. Noble sentiments. But the chairs are already empty, and Belfast just guaranteed more will follow. THE COMMUNION HAS LEFT US To say that much of the Global South is now in a state of “impaired communion” is an understatement. GAFCON leaders concluded long ago that they are done with Canterbury. Last October, in Abuja, they launched the Global Anglican Communion under the chairmanship of Rwandan Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, requiring member provinces to strike references to Canterbury from their constitutions and to assent to the Jerusalem Declaration as the contemporary standard for Anglican identity. Their communiqué put it plainly: “we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.” They are right. In reality, the Communion is no more. It is de facto dead, if not yet de jure. The GSFA primates under Archbishop Justin Badi of South Sudan have taken the more patient road, agreeing to engage with the Nairobi-Cairo process “for the time being” and sending delegates to Belfast — many of whom, tellingly, cannot in conscience receive Holy Communion alongside their Western counterparts. One must ask how long “for the time being” can last. Belfast gave them their answer: the establishment has no intention of reforming itself. The GSFA extended a hand; the ACC studied it and formed a committee. A COMMUNION OF TOURISTS' CATHEDRALS This week's vote cements the establishment's hold on the machinery of the Communion, but it is a hold on a corpse. The Western branches are withering before our eyes. By 2040 the Anglican Church of Canada will be gone, if not before. The Episcopal Church will be a shadow of its former self. The Church in Wales, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Church of England itself will barely be recognizable to demographers, their cathedrals and parish churches repurposed as tourist destinations, concert venues and housing units — the new mantra of mission. Archbishop Sarah Mullally, presiding over her first ACC since taking office in January — and finding herself in the singular position of chairing a debate about the future of her own authority — told delegates the answers to the Communion's divisions may not be structural but “spiritual and relational.” She promised more process: a meeting with the Primates' Standing Committee in September, a Primates' Meeting in early 2027, early planning for another Lambeth Conference. More meetings. More minutes. More management. The machinery grinds on while the body dies. Her own words, invoked in the resolution itself, that “lasting unity is built by trust,” ring hollow. Unity is dead and trust vanished long ago — it bled out over two decades of torn fabric, broken promises and shredded resolutions. She is living in the twilight zone of a communion in tatters, and that she cannot see this indicates a level of spiritual blindness the Apostle Paul would have shredded in a single epistle. The present state of the Communion is held together by bureaucrats, management wonks and theologically vacuous functionaries who long ago abandoned the Gospel and the authority of Scripture. History will record a communion once orthodox, which carried the Gospel from West to East and South, then abandoned that Gospel — and the very peoples who received it now believe it, live it, die for it, and stand ready to bring it back to a West that no longer wants it. Hope springs eternal. But for now, that hope has been quashed by men and women who have lost sight of the very Person — Jesus — whom they claim to follow, and whom they have in truth abandoned. END

At every step of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend. — John Stott AI in some ways brings new challenges. For example, it's going to challenge the very notion of human agency. What is it that makes us human? It's the fact that we have agency. If AI takes away all the things that require human agency, then it will dehumanize us in a way we haven't witnessed before. — Carl Trueman "All migrants who arrive in Europe are penniless, without work, without dignity... This is what the Church wants? The Church cannot cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration." — Cardinal Robert Sarah From the beginning of ACNA, former TEC clergy worried about "losing their medical coverage." I'm sorry, it is a calling. And my advice to new clergy: have a second or third job. This is not for the faint of heart. — Bishop Robert Todd Giffin "Reviving the denominations institutionally, barring supernatural intervention, is nearly impossible. The progressives who control them, who cannot plant new churches or win new members, depend on these bureaucracies, funded by endowments, for their livelihoods." — Mark Tooley "What disturbs me most is that civilized, evangelical leaders hold much of the power and control in our nation and in our world. Yet our evangelical leadership is not creative or compassionate enough to deal with the truths that burst in upon us every day — the economic/social truths of race hatred, energy crisis, crime, hunger, and poverty — in light of the healing mandate of the scriptures." — John Perkins, "Stoning the Prophets" Dear Brothers and Sisters, www.virtueonline.org | July 3, 2026 A very important conference was held in London this past week titled "The Age of Reconstruction," and its stated goal was to move from the age of deconstruction to a new age of reconstruction. In other words, renewal. In the view of the organizers, Western Civilization is in dire need of a new direction: a move away from the decades-long effort to tear it down and toward a reinvigorated embrace of our inheritance and a new commitment to building an even better society. A Gathering for a Civilization in Crisis Some 4,000 conservatives, policymakers, business leaders, and cultural commentators converged on Olympia London June 23-25 for the third Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference, an event that has grown steadily since its founding gathering in 2023 and now bills itself as a movement for "the Age of Reconstruction." The roster read like a who's-who of the international right: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Carl Trueman, Rod Dreher, Os Guinness, Kate Forbes, Danny Kruger, Miriam Cates, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and Kemi Badenoch among more than two hundred speakers across three days. ARC does not advertise itself as a religious event. Its program is built around economics, energy policy, education, technology, and demography. But as has been true since its first meeting, the Christian faith kept forcing its way to the center of the conversation — and it was Os Guinness, an Anglican layman, who gave that undercurrent its most forceful and explicit voice, delivering the closing address on June 25 that named what much of the rest of the gathering had circled around all week. Os Guinness: "A Cut-Flower Civilization" The 84-year-old author and social critic — a man who has spent decades warning the West that it cannot keep living off borrowed capital it no longer believes in — told the ARC audience plainly that the crisis of the West is, at bottom, a crisis of faith. "There's no way around the fact that at the core of every discussion about the renewal of civilization is the place of religion, faith," he said. Guinness pressed the point historically. The West's founding conviction that human beings are created equal, he argued, would have struck Plato and Aristotle as self-evidently false — Plato held that some men are gold, some silver, some bronze; Aristotle held that some are born to rule and others to be ruled. Equality is not a self-evident truth of reason alone. It is, Guinness insisted, a claim with roots exclusively in Jewish and Christian revelation. Strip a civilization of those roots, he warned, and it becomes what he memorably called a "cut-flower civilization" — arranged attractively for a season, admired for its blooms, but severed from the root that gave it life, and dying without knowing it. He drove the same point home on liberty. "Our Western civilization is essentially a Christian civilization rooted in Judaism," he said — "an inescapable fact" that must not be forgotten however uncomfortable it makes the discussion. Liberty itself, he argued, comes "from the Bible," as does the conviction that every human being bears the image of God. "Coming Home" The most striking turn in Guinness's address was theological rather than historical. He took the Hebrew word for repentance, teshuva, and unpacked it for an audience largely unfamiliar with its depth: not merely "turning back," he said, but "coming home, coming back to truth, back to reality, and back to the Author of existence itself." The West, he said, is not simply confused or adrift. It is prodigal. "Our cultures in the West need to come home. They are alienated cultures, they are prodigal cultures, and they need nothing more than coming home." He paired that call with a pointed condemnation of the resurgence of antisemitism across Britain and Europe, calling it "evil" and "profoundly stupid," and reminding the audience bluntly: "Our greatest debt is to the Jewish people." Guinness closed by framing the moment in stark, almost eschatological terms — not the soft "civilizational renewal" language so much of the conference favored, but a direct challenge. Is the God of the burning bush, he asked, the God of Sinai, the Lord who called Galilee's fishermen — is this simply true, or not? Will secular Enlightenment liberalism actually deliver human flourishing on reason alone — or not? "We're at a showdown moment in Western civilization," he said, and the threat is not only external rivals like China, Russia, or Iran, but powerful movements within our own societies against the freedom of self-government. Christian, But Not Especially Anglican For readers of this column, one detail is worth flagging: this was, by any honest reading, a heavily Christian gathering — but not a noticeably Anglican one. The named Christian voices at ARC 2026 span a wide theological map: Trueman is Reformed Presbyterian, Dreher is Eastern Orthodox, Bishop Robert Barron (a veteran of earlier ARC gatherings) is Roman Catholic, and Archbishop Angaelos, also on this year's platform, is the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London — not, despite the title, an Anglican bishop at all. Guinness himself, though long associated with evangelical Anglican circles in Britain going back to his L'Abri years and his friendship with John Stott, is a layman, and none of the announced speakers appear to be sitting Church of England or ACNA/GAFCON bishops. No Sarah Mullally, no Global South primate took the ARC stage this year. That absence speaks volumes. At a moment when GAFCON provinces representing some 80 percent of the world's Anglicans have effectively broken with Canterbury, and when the Church of England's own house is consumed by internal argument over sexuality, safeguarding, and identity, orthodox Anglican voices were simply not in the room where the wider conservative West was gathering to talk about civilizational renewal. One is left to wonder whether that is an oversight — or a signal of just how far institutional Anglicanism has receded from the confidence that once made it, for centuries, the Christian establishment of the English-speaking world. Guinness gave that room a clear, unflinching answer to its own question: there is no reconstruction without repentance, and no coming home without a home to come home to. Whether the wider conservative movement he addressed — or the Anglican Communion watching from a considerable distance — has the theological seriousness to follow him there remains, very much, an open question. I have posted a speech delivered by another theologian at ARC, Dr. Carl Trueman, which you can read here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/carl-trueman-on-the-crisis-of-the-west-and-why-nationalism-and-cultural-christianity-are-not-the-ans THE KING QUIETLY RETIRES "DEFENDER OF THE FAITH" While King Charles III remains the legal "Defender of the Faith" and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Buckingham Palace has updated its description of his official duties to emphasize the protection of "the space for faith within the multi-faith nation." The change appeared in the Sovereign Grant report for 2025-26, the Royal Family's annual financial review published this week. Last year's report described the King's role as "Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith." All that has gone, and many Christian Brits believe it is a great betrayal by a king who swore at his coronation to be the defender of The Faith, not all faiths. One American theologian, a Southern Baptist, got quite worked up about it. R. Albert Mohler tore into the king with these words: "Let me just say as an American, what this means is the Defender of the Faith title in terms of any substance is out the window. This is an absolute disaster... we are talking about the abdication of responsibility. We're talking about the fact that Henry VIII created the Church of England and separated from the Church of Rome, particularly to make a theological statement as well as, of course, dealing with his marital challenges. But the fact is that Defender of the Faith is something that's been a part of the coronation titles." You can read Mohler's take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/king-charles-discards-role-as-defender-of-the-faith ACNA PROVINCIAL COUNCIL: REPORTS OF THE PROVINCE'S DEATH GREATLY EXAGGERATED The Anglican Church in North America wrapped up its 17th Provincial Council at Cornerstone Anglican Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 17-19, a gathering that convened under a cloud of foreboding. With an archbishop under inhibition and awaiting trial, a province still nursing the wounds of the Stewart Ruch affair, and the women's ordination question simmering in the Western Gulf Coast, the prophets of doom had already written the ACNA's obituary. They were wrong. What emerged from Tulsa was a province that, for all its troubles, showed itself very much alive, transacting serious business with a spirit delegates described as one of concord, collegiality, and perseverance. You can read my take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/acna-provincial-council-reveals-divided-church A New Diocese and a Missional Reckoning The Council voted to admit the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-South into the province, a new jurisdiction carved from the Mid-South Missionary District of the Anglican Diocese of the South, spanning Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, western Tennessee, and parts of eastern Texas, with its first bishop expected to be consecrated in 2027. The province's inaugural Mission Index, released ahead of Council, told a more sobering story alongside the celebration: attendance is up 38 percent since 2022, but nearly half of all ACNA congregations still average fewer than 50 people on a Sunday. Growth, yes — but the mission field remains vast and the laborers few. Transparency Deferred, Not Denied The most consequential work in Tulsa was canonical. The long-awaited revision of the Title IV disciplinary canons — three years in the drafting under the Governance Task Force chaired by Canon Andrew Rowell, and refined by a year of robust public comment from every corner of the province — passed the Council unanimously. That unanimity is remarkable given how badly the old machinery creaked under the weight of the Ruch trial. The Council also approved amendments to Title I addressing a gap the province discovered the hard way: what happens when an archbishop cannot fulfill his duties. The transparency question itself was deferred rather than buried. Resolutions from the Anglican Dioceses of South Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic demanding release of the Ruch trial transcript and the Lathrop Review were withdrawn in favor of a chancellor-mediated dialogue with the Court, with a report promised to every diocesan Standing Committee — and the resolutions may yet return to a future Council if the dialogue disappoints. You can read Arlie Coles of TLC's take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/acna-approves-title-iv-overhaul The Wood Trial Slips to October On the Council's final day, the Court for the Trial of a Bishop issued a Notice of Trial Reset in the matter of Archbishop Steve Wood, pushing the start of his trial to October 26, 2026. The Court said the delay would better ensure "a full and fair adjudication" of the allegations. Whether the province's newly reformed disciplinary canons will restore confidence in a process badly bruised by the Ruch affair remains the question hanging over Tulsa's genuine accomplishments. The structures, as delegates were reminded repeatedly, exist to serve the mission. In October we will learn whether they can also serve justice. DOGS RETURNING TO VOMIT: WHY THE MAINLINE "RECONQUISTA" WILL FAIL There is a movement afoot — earnest, energetic, and ultimately doomed — to reconquer the mainline Protestant denominations for the gospel they long ago abandoned. Its advocates speak of renewal, revival, and reclamation. They invoke the memory of better days. They organize conferences, publish manifestos, and recruit orthodox clergy willing to remain inside dying institutions as a remnant witness. Scripture has a word for this. It is not an encouraging one. "As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly." — Proverbs 26:11 The Apostle Peter, never one for diplomatic understatement, reaches for this same image when describing false teachers who have known the truth and turned from it: "A dog returns to its own vomit, and a sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire" (2 Peter 2:22). Peter is not speaking of pagans who never knew better. He is speaking of those who escaped the world's corruption, tasted the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — and went back. That is the precise spiritual condition of the mainline denominations. And it renders the Reconquista project not merely difficult, but theologically misconceived. You can read my take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/dogs-returning-to-vomit-why-the-mainline-reconquista-will-fail C OF E BISHOPS SET TO WAVE THROUGH A CONVERSION THERAPY BAN The 26 Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords can be expected to fall in lockstep behind the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, a prominent supporter of the LGBT agenda in Parliament, in support of Labour's conversion practices bill. Orthodox Christians opposed to the bill cannot expect any support from the Lords Spiritual, despite the fact that it is a denial of free speech and free choice. These are the real casualties of this bill. Walker welcomed what he called the government's long overdue move to protect a community he alleges has suffered physical and psychological abuse. Any episcopal doubter will now think twice before saying so out loud. VOL believes this is wrong-headed policy. It violates the sincere, voluntary wish of many men and women to be free of unwanted same-sex attraction. Many now believe "conversion therapy" has been defined so broadly as to be rendered meaningless. In its place, a new and more precise term has emerged: SAFE-T — Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy. Readers can find more here: https://learning.iftcc.org/sexual-attraction-fluidity-exploration-in-therapy-safe-t/ You can read my full take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/c-of-e-bishops-set-to-wave-through-a-conversion-therapy-ban-that-tramples-free-speech-and-free-choic LLF IS DEAD; LONG LIVE LLF The Church of England can't let it go. In February, the General Synod agreed to form a new group when it voted to bring the controversial Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process to an end. This was a sop to the gay crowd. Church of England bishops have now been appointed to lead groups to establish how clergy could legitimately enter same-sex "marriages." Tricia Hillas, Bishop of Sodor and Man, will chair the Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group, which will consider CofE rules and processes to establish quasi-wedding services for same-sex couples and legitimize clergy same-sex relationships. It will report back to the General Synod within two years. A parallel Pastoral Consultative Group, chaired by the Bishop of Winchester, Philip Mounstephen, will advise on individual cases. One of the stated aims of the Working Group is to define "appropriate legislative changes and further work required to enable clergy to enter same sex marriages." The destination, in other words, has already been chosen; only the route remains to be mapped. You can read more here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/cofe-rebrands-llf-with-new-same-sex-marriage-working-groups KINGDOM OUTPOSTS GIFTED TO ANGLICANS An increasing number of Anglican Church in North America congregations are expressing gratitude to congregations of other Christian traditions that have entrusted buildings they long stewarded to Anglicans. These Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and other churches, prepared to conclude ministry or merge into other congregations, wished to facilitate continued Christian ministry in those places for the benefit of future generations. As a result, ACNA has become the beneficiary of these turnovers. Anglican congregations continue to benefit from newly gifted church buildings, writes Jeff Walton of Juicy Ecumenism. You can read his take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/kingdom-outposts-gifted-to-anglicans A LION IN HIS 100TH YEAR: BISHOP C. FITZSIMONS ALLISON Recently I had the high honor and privilege of interviewing the Episcopal Church and ACNA's oldest living bishop, C. FitzSimons Allison. He is 99 and in his 100th year. I sat in his home for five days, talking with him, his wife Martha, who is 98, his wonderful caregivers, and other members of his family, including his children and grandchildren. His mind, though not as lucid as when I interviewed him in 2022 — "The Lion in Winter," when Allison was 95 — remains profoundly alert to the times in which we live. He is a living witness to nearly the entire arc of the modern Anglican crisis, from the pre-revisionist Episcopal Church through the Singapore consecrations to the founding of the ACNA. Very few people alive can speak to that history from personal experience. Here is a sample question and answer demonstrating the man's great humility: VOL: Is there anything you wish you had said publicly that you held back? ALLISON: Yes. I was a little late in proclaiming the historic faith. VOL: What do you want your epitaph to be — as a bishop, a theologian, a churchman? ALLISON: I am afraid I cannot look back without regret at our failure to maintain the faith once for all delivered to the saints. You can read the full interview, THE LIFE, TIMES, AND WITNESS OF BISHOP C. FITZSIMONS ALLISON, here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/the-life-times-and-witness-of-the-rt-rev-c-fitzsimons-allison LOVE SHOWS UP Love Shows Up (AKA Love for the Least) has just announced its latest figures. The numbers are extraordinary for a two-person Anglican team operating in the Middle East and Africa. Over the years they have planted 15,000 churches in 12 countries among 49 unreached people groups. They have reached all 31 provinces in Iran with the gospel; all house churches led by a discipled laity in one-on-one evangelism. No clergy are involved. Iran is the fastest growing church in the world today. SUPPORT VOL If you value what VOL writes, please consider a tax-deductible donation. This work is a labor of love, but we have bills to pay. There are no salaries — but daily writing continues, and a webmaster, researcher, and overseas journalists must be supported. VOL has brought on new writers with clear insights into Scripture and culture. We have no mega-donors and no grants — only faithful readers who believe in what we do. We are now read in over 100 countries by tens of thousands of readers who trust us to cover the most pressing issues facing Anglicanism today. Only a small percentage contribute. We have proven ourselves over more than 35 years. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. Online: virtueonline.org/donate By check (tax-deductible): VIRTUEONLINE, P.O. Box 111, Shohola, PA 18458 Thank you for your support. David W. Virtue, DD

Three currents led to the nation we have today. Dave Ball | American Thinker | July 1, 2026 Like every great river, the American Republic owes its existence to its headwaters. Three mighty currents of moral, legal, and political thought flowed through the English colonies for nearly 170 years before converging in the Declaration of Independence. Biblical Christianity, English Common Law, and Enlightenment political philosophy each contributed essential ideas, but it was their convergence that wove the intellectual fabric of the American Republic. The Constitution did not create the American idea. It transformed the principles proclaimed in the Declaration into the operating manual of the American Republic. The first current was Biblical Christianity. From the founding of Jamestown in 1607 until independence in 1776, the English colonies were shaped by a biblical understanding of man, morality, and government. The earliest settlers came from many Christian traditions, seeking the freedom to worship according to conscience rather than under government-controlled churches. They often disagreed over doctrine, but they largely agreed that every human being possesses inherent dignity because he is created by God, that moral law exists above civil law, and that rulers are accountable to a higher authority. The Mayflower Compact, the first written framework of self-government in what would become the United States, began with the words “In the name of God, amen.” It established the principle that legitimate government rests upon the voluntary agreement of the governed — a concept that would later find its fullest expression in the Declaration of Independence. Colonial education was rooted in Scripture, and the First Great Awakening (1730–1740) helped forge a shared American identity among colonies that otherwise differed in geography, economics, and religious tradition. The second current was English Common Law. Long before there was an American Constitution, the colonists inherited centuries of English legal development. The Magna Carta established that even the king stood beneath the law. English Common Law emphasized due process, trial by jury, private property, and limits on governmental power. The English Bill of Rights reinforced the principle that liberty depends upon laws that restrain government as much as they protect the people. Americans were learning constitutional government long before they declared independence. The third current was Enlightenment political philosophy. From the late seventeenth century forward, philosophers such as John Locke articulated a philosophy of natural rights and government by the consent of the governed. Locke’s understanding of life, liberty, and property profoundly influenced the Revolutionary generation. Benjamin Franklin admired Locke and helped weave those ideas into the American experience while also drawing from thinkers such as David Hume and Isaac Newton. The Founders did not merely copy Enlightenment philosophy. They adapted it, blending it with biblical morality and English legal tradition into something distinctly American. By 1776, these three currents had converged. The genius of the American Founding was that it united three great traditions into one coherent political system. Biblical Christianity answered, “Who is man?” English Common Law answered, “How should government behave?” Enlightenment philosophy answered, “By what principles should free government operate?” The Declaration of Independence proclaimed the principles of the American experiment. The Constitution provided the machinery to preserve them. The Declaration announced that our rights are endowed by our Creator, not granted by government. The Constitution established a government strong enough to secure those rights, yet limited enough to avoid becoming their greatest threat. Separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and enumerated powers all reflected the Founders’ conviction that because human nature is imperfect, power must always be restrained. Increasingly, Americans speak as though government creates rights rather than protects them. Others argue that the Constitution is a “living document” whose meaning evolves with changing social values. Certainly, the Framers anticipated change. They therefore provided an amendment process. They expected Americans to change the Constitution when necessary — not to separate it from the principles upon which it rests. The Constitution can preserve only those principles it was designed to protect. And it cannot protect principles that the American people no longer believe. America’s 250th birthday an opportunity to remember that the Republic we inherited was born from the convergence of three mighty currents and entrusted to succeeding generations. Can America remain the nation its Founders created if it abandons the principles that created it? Happy 250th, America. May we understand your story well enough to preserve it for generations yet to come. Dave Ball is a retired international business executive, elected public official, and political strategist who writes on politics, technology, and regional issues. He is an Anglican parishioner.

By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I July 2, 2026 There is a movement afoot — earnest, energetic, and ultimately doomed — to reconquer the mainline Protestant denominations for the gospel they long ago abandoned. Its advocates speak of renewal, revival, and reclamation. They invoke the memory of better days. They organize conferences, publish manifestos, and recruit orthodox clergy willing to remain inside dying institutions as a remnant witness. Scripture has a word for this. It is not an encouraging one. "As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly." — Proverbs 26:11 The Apostle Peter, never one for diplomatic understatement, reaches for this same image when describing false teachers who have known the truth and turned from it: "A dog returns to its own vomit, and a sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire" (2 Peter 2:22). Peter is not speaking of pagans who never knew better. He is speaking of those who escaped the world's corruption, tasted the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — and went back. That is the precise spiritual condition of the mainline denominations. And it renders the Reconquista project not merely difficult, but theologically misconceived. THE RECONQUISTA IMPULSE The impulse is understandable. The Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — these were once institutions that preached the atoning death of Christ, held Scripture as authoritative, and sent missionaries to the ends of the earth. Their hymnody was orthodox. Their seminaries trained men who believed what they taught. Their pews were full. The collapse came gradually, then catastrophically. Higher criticism gutted biblical authority. The sexual revolution reshaped their anthropology. Progressive politics replaced prophetic proclamation. Denominational bureaucracies became self-perpetuating engines of theological liberalism, insulated from congregational accountability and impervious to reform. Now a generation of orthodox believers, refusing to concede the institutional real estate without a fight, has mounted what some are calling a Reconquista — a recovery movement aimed at retaking from within what was surrendered without resistance. The historical analogy is instructive, but not in the way its proponents intend. WHAT THE ORIGINAL RECONQUISTA ACTUALLY PRODUCED The Spanish Reconquista lasted nearly eight centuries — from 718 AD to 1492. It succeeded militarily. It failed spiritually. The recovered territories did not produce a renewed Christendom so much as an Inquisition. The instruments forged for reconquest became instruments of coercion. The church that emerged was not purified by the struggle; it was deformed by it. Seven hundred years of effort. And the result was the Spanish Inquisition. If that is the template for mainline renewal, orthodox believers should think carefully before enlisting. WHY INSTITUTIONS CANNOT BE UNCONVERTED The deeper problem is not strategic but biological — which is precisely what the Proverbs image captures. The dog returns to its vomit not because it has made a rational calculation but because it is following its nature. Instinct drives it. Veterinarians confirm the behavior is not pathological — it is simply what dogs do, inherited from wolves who regurgitated food for their pups or cached it for later consumption. The dog is being fully, authentically itself. So are the mainline denominations. Decades of theological liberalism have not merely infected these institutions — they have become these institutions. The seminaries that train their clergy, the bureaucracies that govern their policies, the hermeneutical assumptions that shape their preaching, the progressive ideology that drives their social witness — these are not deviations from an otherwise healthy organism. They are the organism. The DNA has been rewritten. You cannot renew what has been replaced. THE RENEWAL CYCLE The pattern is by now depressingly familiar. A mainline denomination, alarmed by membership hemorrhage and cultural irrelevance, launches a renewal initiative. Evangelical language is borrowed. Scripture is quoted with unaccustomed conviction. A charismatic bishop or energetic pastor becomes the public face of recovery. Attendance ticks upward in selected parishes. Hope is kindled. Then the tide turns. The renewal leaders retire, move on, or are marginalized by the bureaucratic apparatus they never fully controlled. The denominational machinery — committees, commissions, general assemblies, and their attendant ideological agendas — reasserts itself. The borrowed evangelical language is quietly retired. The trajectory resumes. The Episcopal Church has run this cycle multiple times. So has the PCUSA. The UMC, after decades of failed renewal efforts, finally fractured — and the orthodox departed to form the Global Methodist Church, taking with them the painful lesson that institutional loyalty without theological integrity is not faithfulness but sentimentality. Peter's warning applies with precision: it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back (2 Peter 2:21). Institutions that have known orthodox Christianity and rejected it are not neutral territory awaiting reclamation. They are under judgment. Their condition is worse than if they had never been evangelical at all. WHAT FAITHFULNESS ACTUALLY REQUIRES None of this is to disparage the courage of those who have chosen to remain and contend. There is a legitimate witness in staying. But it must be undertaken with clear eyes, not with the illusion that the institution can be turned around from within by sufficiently determined orthodox minorities. The orthodox Anglican witness learned this at enormous cost over thirty years of failed renewal efforts within the Episcopal Church — efforts by Episcopalians United, the American Anglican Council, the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, and others — before the realignment produced ACNA. The lesson was not that the effort was wrong, but that the institution was not reformable. At some point, faithfulness required departure. The Reconquista model assumes that what was lost can be recovered by institutional means — by electing the right bishops, passing the right resolutions, winning the right votes at general conventions. But the mainline crisis is not primarily institutional. It is spiritual. And spiritual problems are not solved by parliamentary procedure. THE GOSPEL THEY ABANDONED What the mainline denominations abandoned was not merely a set of doctrinal propositions. They abandoned the gospel — the announcement that Jesus Christ died for sinners, rose bodily from the dead, and will return to judge the living and the dead. They abandoned the authority of Scripture as the norming norm of Christian faith and life. They abandoned a biblical anthropology that understands human beings as made male and female in the image of God, fallen, and in need of redemption. These are not peripheral matters that can be negotiated back into institutional life through clever strategy. They are the substance of Christian faith. Without them, what remains is not a church in need of renewal. It is a social organization wearing ecclesiastical clothing. Dogs return to their vomit. It is what they do. The mainline denominations will continue their trajectory — shrinking, aging, compromising, and celebrating their own decline as prophetic progressivism — because that is now their nature. The orthodox have not abandoned the gospel by leaving these institutions. They have honored it. The Reconquista will not succeed because the territory it seeks to recover has not merely been occupied by the enemy. It has been given over to him — willingly, repeatedly, and with theological sophistication. Scripture told us exactly what this would look like. Peter warned us. The only question is whether we will believe him. David W. Virtue, DD, is the founder and editor of VirtueOnline (virtueonline.org), the leading orthodox Anglican news and commentary website.

Carl Trueman speaks at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference 2026. (Photo: Parsons Media) Theologian Carl Trueman was at ARC 2026 to share his thoughts on why things have gone wrong in the West and what can be done to turn things around. He speaks to Christian Today about the challenges and why neither cultural Christianity nor nationalism are the answer. We heard a lot about the "deconstruction" of Western civilization during the conference and a lot of speakers gave various explanations as to how and why it happened. What would you personally pinpoint as the source of the deconstruction? I think the crumbling of Western society is really predicated on the idea of human beings as self-creating and autonomous, and I would argue that we’re actually obliged and dependent. If we try to live as if we are independent, free, self-creating autonomous beings, then the traditional structures of society that developed in the pre-modern age will be challenged and eventually disintegrate. The autonomous self has been around for a long time; the difference now is that we have the technology to act on it - autonomy has become plausible because technology enables it. Do you think AI is only going to make the challenges greater in this respect? Yes and I think AI in some ways brings new challenges. For example, it’s going to challenge the very notion of human agency. What is it that makes us human? It’s the fact that we have agency. If AI takes away all the things that require human agency, then it will dehumanise us in a way we haven’t witnessed before. Is there anything you heard from other speakers during the conference that challenged your thinking? What Melanie Phillips said about the death of Western culture didn’t so much challenge my thinking as make me realise that the self-loathing developing among certain Western societies is greater than I imagined - and very significant in terms of what’s going on. Do you think the Church has been part of the problem? Yes. Taking the point I made in my own address about no-fault divorce, the Protestant Church was supine in the face of that. It didn’t make a noise about it or resist it, and it hasn’t addressed it in its own ranks. If the redefinition of marriage is primarily located with no-fault divorce, as I think it is, then one would have to say that many churches are being completely complicit in that redefinition. Do you see any hope for Britain to turn things around or has the decline gone too far? I’m here in the same week that Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister and my take on it is that the problems within the British economy and British culture run very deep. A mere change of personality at the top is not going to address those things. It has me wondering if the only way the issues will ever be properly addressed is if there is a major crisis of some kind. It may well be the same in the US, but the problem at this point in time is much greater and more immediate in the UK. What differences do you see between the US and UK in terms of the challenges to civilization raised at this conference? America has a more conservative executive administration and clearly the figure of Donald Trump makes American politics very interesting at the moment. But one of the clear differences is that in Britain, particularly Muslim immigration has proved a problem. That is not to say that all Muslim immigrants are a problem but that there are now very different cultures being juxtaposed in relatively restricted geographical spaces and that is always problematic - particularly if the host culture lacks the confidence that it apparently does in the United Kingdom. So I am absolutely not saying that all Muslim immigrants are a problem, but the accommodation of immigrants from Muslim countries is clearly the question that has to be answered in some way in Britain. And at the moment I think British politicians - particularly Labour politicians, because of the nature of the electoral map - are simply not willing to face up to that. How do you think Britain can become more confident in the good it has contributed to civilization? There needs to be a reinvigoration of our institutions. The problem in the West and Britain in particular is that we have now had several generations of higher education under the control of people who hate their own culture, and that has left us with generations of culturally bankrupt people. It’s impossible to have confidence in a culture that you have been taught is worthless. And the reinvigoration of institutions is key to turning that around but how we do that is difficult to answer. Perhaps we need to create alternative, parallel institutions. What do you think about the move towards nationalism? In the UK there is an emerging Christian nationalism and a lot of Christians are finding it attractive. One needs to be very careful. The tendency of the Left to conflate nationalism and patriotism is an unfortunate one because it pushes a lot of patriots into the nationalist camp. As an analogy: if a husband calls his wife the most beautiful woman in the world, he is not making a factual claim about whether every other woman in the world is less beautiful. Rather, it is simply a way of expressing his love for the special woman in his life. Patriotism should be like that. To have love for your country doesn’t necessarily mean that you regard every other country as inferior. Nationalism does. Nationalism is a way of expressing your own country’s superiority to every other country and that’s an important distinction that’s been lost in public discourse and which needs to be regained. Ayaan Hirsi Ali suggested earlier in the conference that a lot of the West takes its civilization and liberties for granted. Do you think Christians fully appreciate the role Christianity has played in shaping Western civilization and all its benefits? No, I don’t think they do. I think the West is probably characterized by a basic ignorance of history on a lot of fronts. Typically when most people think about the role of Christianity in history, they think about slavery and the worst aspects of imperialism. We need to get the message out that Christianity is actually a force for good on a lot of fronts. Bijan Omrani, in his book God is an Englishman, does a good job of not white-washing the Church’s faults while making the point that Christianity in England was instrumental in forging the best aspects of our society. It seems like people on the Right are suddenly appreciating Christianity in a way that they weren’t before. What do you make of that? For some, it’s a sophisticated metaphysical thing. For example, the transgender issue raises questions about the status of the body because if, in a highly technological age, one argues for some normative authority to the body, then one simply has to ask metaphysical questions. People like Mary Harrington or Ayaan Hirsi Ali have come to Christianity by asking metaphysical questions about how one justifies the good. I worry about those who simply grab hold of Christianity as a stick to beat the opposition with. Using Christianity in that way becomes just a point of identity and it fails to address the claims of Christ, the cross, and the empty tomb. We see this in America with the Christian nationalism there. It will only remain Christian as long as Christianity gives it an audience. Once that ceases to be the case, it will just be nationalism. We must not confuse Christianity with a Nietzschean craving for power at any cost - that’s lethal to the faith. When Kemi Badenoch addressed the conference she said she was a cultural Christian - and not for the first time. But is cultural Christianity enough to save the West? I’d rather live in a culturally Christian society than a culturally anti-Christian society. For example, I don’t care why you believe that children should be protected; the fact that you believe this is a good thing. Having said that, I do think that in the long run we need a metaphysical coherence to justify these beliefs. So I pray that for somebody like Kemi Badenoch, cultural Christianity is a stepping stone to a robust supernatural Christianity. I don’t think in the long run that cultural Christianity will be strong enough to build on because it’s an expression of taste rather than an expression of truth and that’s the big problem with it. The ARC conference spent a lot of time considering the “reconstruction” of Western civilization. What does that look like to you and what role should the Church play? Firstly, we need to realise that the problems we face in Western society today started hundreds of years ago, so there’s no quick fix. We’ve got to build now like the builders of medieval cathedrals laying the foundation stones, so that people 200 years from now will thank us. In other words, we’ve got to think about the long game. Secondly, for most of us we need to ask ourselves where we can have an influence. Social media tricks people into thinking they are important and that they can have a big influence around the world, but most people have the biggest influence over the people they meet day to day, in real time and real space - our families, our neighbourhoods, our communities, the workplace or the classroom. Rebuilding has to begin with us modelling, at the local level, how to treat other human beings as human beings made in the image of God. That’s the way to grab the imagination and it’s how the early church did it and it worked. It’s a humble beginning but it could bear potent and powerful fruit in the long run, so we have to do it. We have to be kind, hospitable, respectful, and stand for the truth.

The Christian Institute I July 1, 2026 Church of England (CofE) bishops have now been appointed to lead groups to establish how clergy could legitimately enter same-sex ‘marriages’. Tricia Hillas, Bishop of Sodor and Man, will chair the Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group, which will consider CofE rules and processes to establish quasi-wedding services for same-sex couples and legitimise clergy same-sex relationships. It will report back to the General Synod in two years. In February, the General Synod agreed to form this group when it voted to bring the controversial Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process to an end. And a Pastoral Consultative Group to advise on individual cases will be chaired by Bishop Philip Mounstephen. It will produce an annual report to “inform the ongoing deliberation and discernment” of the working group and the bishops. Enabling same-sex marriages One of the aims of the Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group is to define “appropriate legislative changes and further work required to enable clergy to enter same sex marriages”. It will also explore “Resourcing the pastoral care for transgender people” and “Modelling healthy sexual relationships, including pornography”. Tricia Hillas was not a bishop in 2023 when the House of Bishops voted in favour of introducing standalone services to bless same-sex couples. Inclusivity over purity Bishop Mounstephen was previously co-chair of the Living in Love and Faith steering group alongside the now Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally. When taking up his post as Bishop of Westminster two years ago, he was quizzed on a number of his views, including on same-sex marriage. He said: “My understanding of marriage is that it is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. But I long for us to be a generous and welcoming church and a non-judgemental church, so my pastoral instinct is always to include rather than exclude and I would much rather have a messy church with some unanswered questions in it than a pure church that goes on excluding people. “I would be the first to recognise that there were good things in same-sex relationships that I think should be recognised and celebrated … some of the nicest, most supportive, least judgemental clergy in the diocese of Truro were the gay clergy who were just a joy to work with.” Pushing for change Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York commented: “I am delighted that both Tricia and Philip have agreed to chair these groups, and am deeply grateful to them for their willingness to serve. “I know both of them will undertake this work with integrity, sensitivity and great care.” The National Director of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), Revd John Dunnett, responded to the announcement of these groups in February: “It is anticipated that the newly established groups will be pushed very hard by those wanting to pursue change to bring to the General Synod, as quickly as possible, some kind of proposal to amend the canons of the Church of England, so that clergy same-sex marriage will be a possibility. “It’s also possible that the General Synod will find itself debating a motion, even as early as this July, exploring the proposal that intimate same-sex relationships are entirely compatible with Christian discipleship.” Biblical ethics The Christian Institute’s Head of Communications Angus Saul said: “There is no ‘appropriate’ way for clergy to be in so-called same-sex marriages, and the sooner the Church of England realises it the better. “Instead of bending over backwards to try and avoid accepting orthodox teaching, the bishops should be boldly proclaiming biblical sexual ethics as the best way for human flourishing for all people, no matter what their situations or struggles. “Pastoral sensitivity cannot come at the cost of moral compromise, and lying to parishioners and the nation at large by claiming same-sex relationships are not sinful helps no-one. “It drives faithful ministers and laity away from the Church of England, but far worse than that, it leaves the lost mired in their sin without recognising their need of a Saviour.”

Jeffrey Walton I JUICY ECUMENISM I June 15, 2026 In 2024, the Church of the Good Shepherd received an extraordinary gift from the oldest Baptist congregation in Lynchburg, Virginia. The Anglican church first planted in 2011 that met across 15 years in homes and modest storefronts in the central Virginia city now worships under the tallest spire downtown, in what the Virginia Department of Historic Resources describes as “perhaps Virginia’s best representative of the High Victorian Gothic style.” Most remarkable was the purchase price: when the deed was transferred from First Baptist Church to Church of the Good Shepherd in the fall of 2024, it was given free of charge. Good Shepherd is among an increasing number of Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) congregations expressing gratitude to congregations of other Christian traditions that have entrusted buildings they long stewarded to Anglicans. These Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and other churches prepared to conclude ministry or merge into other congregations and wished to facilitate continued Christian ministry in those places for the benefit of future generations. The Lynchburg congregation isn’t the first local Anglican church to receive such a gift. In 2013, Second Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina transferred the deed for their downtown property to St. Paul’s Church, a parish of the ACNA Diocese of the Carolinas. Additionally, there are instances in which congregations with an existing property merged with Anglican church plants, such as Ashland Emmanuel Church in Ashland, Ohio. That congregation disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church and, in 2025, merged with St. Augustine’s Ashland Mission, part of the ACNA Diocese of the Living Word. The merger formed Emmanuel Anglican Church in an historic 1914 church building. Stained glass in the sanctuary of Emmanuel Anglican Church in Ashland, Ohio. There are also many instances in which Anglican congregations were sold buildings at significantly below-market value by churches seeking to preserve Christian worship at their historic sites. Gracious Gift Anglican clergy at these churches describe gracious donations that were the answer to years of prayer. The properties also bring new responsibilities to form facilities committees, care for specific neighborhood communities, and have facilitated substantial congregational growth. “We are incredibly thankful and, frankly, are often left speechless by the beauty and the resources of this building,” Church of the Redeemer (Anglican) Rector the Rev. Paul Calvin describes the 135-year-old Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) building that his congregation received from St. Stephanus Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota when the latter voted to close. In September of 2025, the church’s board voted to sell the building and its contents to Redeemer. The cost was $1. An April 2026 service at Church of the Redeemer in St. Paul, Minnesota, a congregation in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh (Photo courtesy of Church of the Redeemer) “We are grateful for the grace of God shown to us by the generosity of St. Stephanus Lutheran,” Calvin shares about the gift. “In the midst of scarcity, even in the midst of them closing their doors, they have given freely, generously, and joyously, giving themselves first to the Lord and then, by God’s will, to us.” A Kingdom Outpost in the Neighborhood Redeemer’s 1890 building, which Calvin notes was “kept in good shape,” has already proven advantageous to the parish. After years of holding services at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoons, the congregation now meets on Sunday mornings. “We had ‘self-selected out’ those who like football on Sunday afternoons,” Calvin jokes, noting that a morning service has seen more newcomers both arrive and return than in the preceding 15 years that the Anglican congregation was in need of its own space. Some of those newcomers are from the Frogtown neighborhood in which the church is now located. Almost 40 percent of the church’s neighbors are foreign-born. Parish ministries have provided legal aid, groceries, and rent relief. More young adults have also come, drawn by the historic character of the building, constructed before the advent of the automobile when development was laid out to be walkable to residential homes. Nearby, Restoration Anglican Church in Minneapolis was given its building by another LCMS congregation in October 2021. “Their congregation had kindly allowed us to use their space for strategy meetings and evening services; they even let me ‘office’ in the building,” recalls Restoration’s rector, the Rev. Rick Stawarz. One of the Lutheran church’s elders approached Stawarz asking if the Anglican congregation would be interested in owning the facility. “Their congregation had dwindled, and they wanted their building to remain a kingdom outpost in the neighborhood,” Stawarz explained. That began a conversation that eventually led to the building’s sale for $1. A baptism service at Restoration Anglican Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Pentecost of 2024 (Photo courtesy of Restoration Anglican). “They took fantastic care of this facility, so only basic cosmetic work was needed before holding weekly worship there,” Stawarz noted. Other pastors in the neighborhood told Stawarz that, when a relatively new church plant gets a new building, it will double in size within twelve months. “We found that to be true.” As various tragedies hit Minneapolis, having a facility of their own enabled Restoration Anglican Church to respond through hosting onsite prayer vigils and a popup community resource closet. “The building has had tangible and immediate impacts on our ability to serve the people of Church of the Good Shepherd,” shares Fr. Tim Brophy, who serves as Associate Rector for Lynchburg’s Good Shepherd, a congregation in the ACNA Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic. Brophy notes that gatherings now take place almost every day in the building, and Sundays see nearly 75 infants and school-aged children. Next month, the parish will host its first vacation bible school. This coming autumn, the church will sponsor an Anglican Student Fellowship at nearby Liberty University to serve the 40-50 students that already participate in the church’s ministries on a weekly basis. Church of the Good Shepherd in Lynchburg, Virginia. “Needless to say,” Brophy adds, “the building has had a great impact on our internal ministries.” Inheriting an expansive space with more than one kitchen means the church can partner with local farmers and chefs; it is in the process of opening a soup kitchen to serve their neighborhood “within the next year or so.” Church-wide yard sales and block parties have also been hosted. “There’s no doubt that we’ve seen our external ministries increase tremendously since we’ve moved into the new building and experienced the associated numerical growth,” Brophy notes, pointing to parish attendance that has increased from 50 persons through 2016 to 181 persons in 2025, a growth of 26 percent from 2024. Year-to-date, the congregation’s average attendance has exceeded 220. A Continuing Legacy Anglican congregations continue to benefit from newly gifted church buildings. In May, Hope Church in Charleston, West Virginia, part of the Diocese of Christ Our Hope, marked Pentecost with worship services at an originally Lutheran church building gifted by a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation. “For a young congregation like ours, this act of generosity feels nothing short of remarkable,” wrote The Very Rev. Derek Roberts, Hope Church’s rector. “In a cultural moment where many conversations about churches center on decline and closure, we are grateful to share a story marked by generosity, partnership, and hope.” Hope Church in Charleston, West Virginia, was first planted in 2017 and moved into its new space in May of 2026. It’s a sentiment shared by Redeemer’s Calvin, who welcomed members of the LCMS church back to the building for an open house, telling the church’s former congregation “we’ve been able to do this because of your generosity.” Among the contents of the building entrusted to Redeemer is an original 1890 silver baptismal font, etched in German, in which generations of people were baptized. Today, Redeemer’s clergy baptize with it in a sign of “taking on a mantle” of local ministry that existed there long before them. Calvin says the Lutherans told members of Redeemer “We’ve loved what you’ve done.” “May we, and all Christians, steward God’s gifts with the faith and gracious generosity that we have experienced,” Calvin notes. “If the Lord is calling you to it, he’ll prepare you for it.”

ALBERT MOHLER I The Briefing I June 30, 2026 I want to get to an issue which is really big. It has a huge history behind it, but it also has huge, well, diagnostic dimensions about the present. I’m talking about the decision and now being announced in Great Britain about King Charles III recalibrating and redefining his role, which had been for centuries as Defender of the Faith and Supreme Head of the Church of England, his constitutional role. Now, this can be renegotiated in Britain in various ways. The most important way would be the coronation language. And in taking the coronation language, King Charles III actually used the historic language. Okay. Where did that language come from? Defender of the Faith, Supreme Head of the Church of England. Where did that come from? It goes back to the 16th century. It goes back to the Reformation. It goes back to a fascinating story. That story has to do with the fact that King Henry III was a staunch defender of the papacy and of the Catholic cause until all of a sudden he wasn’t. And that was over, of course, the question of whether or not he could be granted an annulment in terms of his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He wanted to marry Anne Boleyn and this was a crisis that led to a constitutional crisis, an ecclesial crisis between England and Rome because the papacy did not cooperate with Henry’s plan in terms of the marriage. So Henry decided to break with the long tradition of the Church of Rome being present in the Church of Rome as the Catholic churches there in England. It was a Catholic state. Prince Henry, King Henry VIII, as he later became, was himself known as a Catholic prince and as a Catholic king. And as a matter of fact, he had written the defense of the papacy that so impressed the papacy as defense of the Catholic church that he was granted the title by the Pope of Defender of the Faith. Those words are all important, Defender of the Faith, those four words. And by the way, he kept that after he made the break with Rome and actually more or less joined the Reformation, creating a third tradition in terms of the Anglican tradition, establishing the Church of England and the monarch as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. So this was a break with Rome. This became a part of the Reformation. This is very, very central to the Reformation that took place in the English-speaking world, and it had a great deal to do with the redefinition of the entire British society and in particular the British throne now as something separate from the Vatican, separate from the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, King Henry in establishing a new system in which you had a Church of England rather than the Church of Rome and in which case he’s now the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he kept the Catholic title given to him by the Pope as Defender of the Faith. And that has gone through successive generations such that Queen Elizabeth II, the mother of King Charles III, when she took the coronation oath, just absolutely embraced the role of Defender of the Faith and as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. And she gave evidence to the fact that she did identify very clearly as a Christian. All right, King Charles is a different individual. Let’s just put it that way. And from the beginning, even when he was the Prince of Wales, when he was not yet king, when he was just a prince, he was giving interviews indicating that he was very committed to what we can only call some kind of form of postmodern mysticism. And in that postmodern mysticism well, let’s just say it became evident in interviews he did such as a very, I’ll say, famous or infamous interview he did with journalist Jonathan Dimbleby. And he actually made the statement that he really didn’t want to be the Defender of the Faith because that means a specific faith. And that means, by the way, the faith confessed by the Church of England, which is the Protestant faith, which means Christianity, Protestant Christianity, and as particularly represented in the Church of England. Instead, he said he wanted to be the defender of faith, he said for the divine and everyone that he was just talking to this journalist, but this is loose talk. This is dangerous talk for someone who would later become the king of England, and now he’s following through with it. So for instance, you have headlines coming from England, “King’s role Redefined to Protect Multi-Faith Nation.” That’s the news network known as MSN. Okay. So there is something big going on here at least in terms of what we’re able to read, it does not appear that he is officially surrendering the coronation title Defender of the Faith, deciding instead to take the word “the” out as a definite article. Let’s just say that would be a complete surrender. He is nonetheless adopting new language. Buckingham Palace has announced that he will now define his role as being a defender of all faiths and he defines his role as that within an evolving nation, a multi-faith Britain. And at least a part of how this is being reframed by Buckingham Palace is that the King’s role will be specified as, “protecting the space for faith within the multi-faith nation.” Okay. So very quickly, this is an absolute disaster. It is just an absolute disaster. We are talking about the abdication of responsibility. We’re talking about the fact that Henry VIII created the Church of England and separated from the Church of Rome, particularly to make a theological statement as well as of course dealing with his marital challenges. But the fact is that Defender of the Faith is something that’s been a part of the coronation titles. Prince Charles as a postmodern thinker, and by the way he is. I had the opportunity to meet with him and even to discuss these issues in a group some years ago when he was still the Prince of Wales. And I can tell you he is absolutely committed to a kind of new age spiritual confusion. I’ll just say in making that statement, I think I’m making it kindly. I wrote an article about this back in November of 2008. So in other words, I’ve been watching this a long time. And in the meantime, I’ve been collecting materials and then what was in that meeting with the prince. And I can simply tell you, I think he absolutely means what he’s saying. I think he absolutely believes in kind of a postmodern absolute mush. You can use the term new age. I think that’s very clear. It’s kind of an ecotheology behind his spirituality, but I think he’s also, as someone who’s very much in the cultural elites in Europe, they have an absolutely unrealistic understanding of anything that is truly theological. They just see it all as part of this giant kind of postmodern mush. But there is also something else going on here and that is that what you see in the case of many of these and Prince Charles is at the top of this list, is that they have an absolute fascination with Islam. But it’s an intellectual version of Islam that has very little to do with Islam on the ground. And just think of the headlines coming, the rape gang issues and the giant question about the ultimate allegiance of so many people by the millions who are now in the United Kingdom and with an Islamic identity. Just understand that I think King Charles is absolutely disconnected from reality in all of this. Now, back when a lot of this came up, and I’ll go back to the early years of the 21st century, Prince Charles was talking about the coronation oath out loud in some of these interviews. That didn’t happen, but we are talking about a significant official document in Britain. It’s known as the sovereign grant and this is the report coming out 2025/2026 and it is explicitly leaving behind the Defender of the Faith title. And as at least MSN’s report says, acknowledging the United Kingdom’s religious diversity. Listen to this, “The change reflects the king’s decades-long commitment to interfaith engagement with communities across Britain, the commonwealth and internationally, including Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Orthodox Christian, and other traditions.” He went on to say, “I’ve always thought of Britain as a community of communities that has led me to understand that the sovereign has an additional duty less formally recognized. But to be no less diligently discharged, it is the duty to protect the diversity of our country, including by protecting the space for faith itself and its practice through the religions, cultures, traditions, and beliefs to which our hearts and minds direct us as individuals.” You’ll notice there, that is a studious effort to declare absolutely no personal religious identity whatsoever. Let me just say as an American, what this means is the Defender of the Faith title in terms of any substance is out the window. Albert Mohler is an American evangelical theologian and the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is known for hosting the podcast The Briefing, where he analyzes news and events from a Christian perspective. Mohler has also served as a pastor and has written several books on theology and culture.

By Arlie Coles I THE LIVING CHURCH I June 30, 2026 Comprehensive revisions to the Anglican Church in North America’s Title IV canons for clergy discipline were ratified by the church’s Provincial Assembly at a special virtual meeting on July 25, enacting the legislation passed unanimously by its Provincial Council a week prior. The reform radically restructures the denomination’s processes for intake, investigation, and adjudication of reports of clergy misbehavior, quintupling the length of its provisions in an effort to address what the church’s Governance Task Force had called “grave inadequacies in the status quo… particularly in the case of our disciplinary process for bishops” and “a commitment to ‘minimalism’ that has not served the province well.” “The approval of these revisions is the result of nearly three years of intense listening, consultation, and hard work across the province centered on a commitment to establishing clear rules, known in advance, and out in the open for everyone to see in order to restore trust in a faithful disciplinary system,” said the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, the ACNA’s interim leader, in a press release. Canonical restructuring For bishops, the new Title IV provisions replace disciplinary canons dating from the ACNA’s 2009 founding, which were based on Episcopal Church canons that themselves predated landmark modernizing reforms in 1994 and 1997. No standing investigative body existed, and trial practice before a large court was inflected with the complex norms and delays of civil procedure in the absence of other rules. Now, reports of episcopal misconduct that cannot be pastorally resolved will be sent to a standing Reports Investigation Committee, which will investigate and potentially refer matters for mediation or hearings. Hearings will be conducted by three-person panels of a new disciplinary tribunal and will follow streamlined rules. These new bodies, directly inspired by the disciplinary structures of the Church of Ireland, also share features with the Reference Panels and Hearing Panels of the Episcopal Church’s current Title IV system, which was established in 2009 near the time of the ACNA’s separation. “We believe the scale of the changes is commensurate with the scale of the need for reform, and so our maturing province needs maturing disciplinary canons,” said the Rev. Canon Andrew Rowell, chair of the ACNA’s Governance Task Force, during the Provincial Assembly meeting. “Our goal is, if you are an actor in a disciplinary matter… you will know what you’re supposed to do.” The changes are part of the ACNA’s response to a recent spate of episcopal misconduct issues. Last December, the church’s trial court acquitted the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch of episcopal neglect following controversial closed proceedings that saw two prosecutors resign mid-trial. The court is also currently processing matters involving the Rt. Rev. Derek Jones, who is accused of schism and mistreatment of chaplains, and the Most Rev. Steve Wood, the ACNA’s archbishop and primate, who is accused of personal, financial, and sexual misconduct. Under the new Title IV, the “inadequately designed on-ramp for the discipline of bishops” has also been reworked, according to the Governance Task Force. Instead of requiring three bishops or ten people to initiate a formal complaint against a bishop, as both the ACNA’s original canons and the Episcopal Church’s pre-1997 canons required, the ACNA’s new Title IV allows any person to open the process by contacting an intake officer, as the Episcopal Church’s canons allow today. The previous intake process, which the Governance Task Force called “almost impossible” to use, had been a frequent source of conflict. In the Ruch case, a dispute over whether three bishops had enough knowledge to swear to a complaint provoked a constitutional crisis reaching the church’s highest court. In the Wood case, eleven clergy and lay complainants were initially blocked from lodging allegations that lacked formal language requested by the provincial office. With a lower barrier to entry, “it is easier to start the process — anyone may make a Report,” the Governance Task Force wrote, “but the offramps are many.” Complaints may be closed at intake if a group including the intake officer and the archbishop agree that there are no reasonable grounds for continuing, after optional mediation by the archbishop if the complaint does not allege abuse, after investigation if there is no prima facie case found, after a hearing, or at any time if the bishop confesses to wrongdoing. The revisions also provide a similar process for optional diocesan use to discipline priests and deacons, but dioceses may certify that they will instead use different processes “of at least equal fairness, transparency, and integrity.” The new canons take effect January 1, 2027. Pending disciplinary actions still under old canons Bishops currently involved in ACNA disciplinary processes are continuing their cases under the previous Title IV provisions. In June, the ACNA’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop denied Archbishop Steve Wood’s request to dismiss his case, granted his request to hold the trial in private, and denied the prosecutor’s request to allow the College of Bishops to observe the proceedings. (The church’s new Title IV enshrines the “public nature of judicial proceedings” as a norm, with exceptions for some situations involving minors or vulnerable adults.) The court also stated that the Rev. Canon Jeff Weber, who presided over the procedurally troubled Ruch trial and whom the prosecution had sought to disqualify from Wood’s defense, “withdrew from representation of the Archbishop” on May 29. The date of Wood’s trial, originally scheduled for July 20, is not stable. The court announced on June 19 that it would “reset” the trial date to October 26 on its own initiative, but softened a week later as it simultaneously rejected a request from Wood that the original date be kept and promised the trial would be held “no sooner than October 18, 2026.” The court’s announcement expressed hope that the three-month postponement “will allow for increased cooperation between stakeholders regarding information that could evidence [the] truth but which has, to this point, not been forthcoming from several sources.” Court rules regulate pretrial discovery of evidence, including through the taking of depositions and the production of documents, but the court stated that it “does not have the power to force” participation in its procedures. (The new Title IV imposes a duty to cooperate with requests for evidence, where noncooperation or obstruction may be weighed negatively at trial and, for clergy, may constitute a separate basis for discipline.) “The Court is mindful of the need for a speedy trial in this case, but has weighed that need against the need for a full adjudication of these allegations, both for the good of the Church and the Archbishop’s own reputation,” the court wrote. Separately, Bishop Derek Jones, who declared his separation from the ACNA last September, has not replied to the court’s summons, according to a June 4 announcement. According to the court’s rules, if a bishop fails to reply, the prosecution can request summary judgment, which could resolve the case without trial if granted. In May, the Rt. Rev. Marshall MacClellan, the Rt. Rev. Mark Nordstrom, and the Rt. Rev. Michael Williams, suffragan bishops who followed Jones into his breakaway Anglican Reformed Catholic Church, were also indicted on charges of canonical violations and schism. The ARCC held a synod in mid-June where one new bishop was consecrated. Civil litigation also continues between Jones and the ACNA. Jones’ chaplaincy jurisdiction’s federal lawsuit against the church, which alleges trademark infringement and unfair competitive practices, had stalled since January but was pushed forward in June when the ACNA filed supporting material for its motion that the court dismiss the case on First Amendment grounds, according to provincial chancellor Bill Nelson. “The case is really a dispute over church governance and discipline and not a business dispute,” Nelson said from the floor of Provincial Council, adding that the church “[does] not know at this point when the court will schedule a hearing on this motion or take further action.” Bishop Dobbs’ defamation lawsuit against Jones, not mentioned at either of the church’s two governance gatherings, also remains pending. Arlie Coles is a lay Anglican from the Diocese of Dallas who writes about modern Episcopal history and polity. She is also a machine-learning researcher serving on General Convention’s Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property.

The bishops' bench backs Labour's Conversion Practices Bill. They are wrong to do so. COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | June 30, 2026 Orthodox Christians opposed to the Labour Government's Conversion Practices Bill should expect no support from the 26 Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords. The Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, a prominent supporter of the LGBT agenda in Parliament, has fired a warning shot across the bows of any fellow bishop feeling lukewarm about the draft Bill, which the government published on June 25. He welcomed what he called the government's long overdue move to protect a community he alleges has suffered physical and psychological abuse. Any episcopal doubter will now think twice before saying so out loud. VOL believes this is wrong-headed policy. It violates free speech, and it violates the sincere, voluntary wish of many men and women to be free of unwanted same-sex attraction. Many now believe “conversion therapy” has been defined so broadly as to be rendered meaningless. In its place, a new and more precise term has emerged: SAFE-T — Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy. Readers can find more here: https://learning.iftcc.org/sexual-attraction-fluidity-exploration-in-therapy-safe-t/ The numbers driving this debate come from the Williams Institute at UCLA, which remains the most-cited source on the subject. Its research puts the figure at roughly 698,000 LGBT adults in the U.S. who have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, about half of them as adolescents. A companion estimate found 20,000 youths would undergo it from a licensed professional, and 57,000 from a religious or spiritual advisor, in states without a ban. The Institute has continued to press those numbers — as recently as October 2025, in an amicus brief filed in Chiles v. Salazar, the case challenging Colorado's ban on licensed counselors providing conversion therapy to minors. That case has since been decided — and decisively. On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8–1 in favor of Kaley Chiles, the Colorado counselor who challenged her state's ban. Writing for the Court, Justice Gorsuch held that a law restricting what a licensed therapist may say to a client based on the viewpoint of that speech triggers strict scrutiny under the First Amendment — the most demanding standard in constitutional law. Even Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, no conservatives, joined the majority. Only Justice Jackson dissented. Whatever one makes of the underlying clinical debate, the nation's highest court has now said plainly that talk therapy is speech, and the government does not get to outlaw one side of a conversation just because it dislikes where that conversation might lead. Even activists increasingly concede the underlying premise is shakier than advertised: same-sex attraction is now treated by many as symptomatic rather than the essential driver of identity. No one is born gay. Gay is not, in itself, the problem to be solved or the truth to be defended. It is a question almost no one is permitted to ask. Few subjects in contemporary Western society are more instantly explosive than conversion therapy — the clinical and pastoral effort to help individuals diminish or redirect unwanted same-sex attraction. It has been condemned by governments, banned in a growing number of jurisdictions, denounced by mainline churches, and dismissed by virtually every credentialed professional body in the English-speaking world. To raise the subject is to invite the charge of homophobia. To practice it is, in some places, to risk prosecution. But is the condemnation warranted? And more importantly, is it honest? The question is not whether coercion is wrong — it is. No serious defender of conversion therapy advocates dragging unwilling patients into a therapist's office and demanding that their sexuality be altered against their will. That caricature, however vivid and useful it may be to critics, does not describe what reparative therapy's defenders are actually proposing. The Case of Young Johnny Consider two scenarios. In the first, a father drags his reluctant teenage son to a therapist's office, announces that the boy is gay, and demands he be “fixed.” The coercion here is obvious, the outcome predictably futile, and the damage to the young man potentially lasting. No serious clinician would defend such a scenario. Neither would most reparative therapy proponents. In the second scenario, a young man walks voluntarily into a therapist's office, articulates his own distress over same-sex attraction, and asks for help in addressing it. He is not being coerced. He is not acting under parental pressure or duress. He is exercising precisely the kind of personal autonomy that liberal democratic society claims to prize above nearly everything else. He is asking for help with something he experiences as unwanted. Why, in this second scenario, should he be denied that help? That is the question the current cultural consensus refuses to answer honestly. Instead, it pivots: he is told that attempting change will likely make him suicidal; that he was born this way and resistance is futile; that his attractions are immutable, constitutive of his identity, and ought to be celebrated rather than questioned. These claims are presented not as contested hypotheses but as settled science. They are not. The Science Is Not Settled The claim that sexual orientation is fixed at birth — that there is, in effect, a “gay gene” that determines the matter — has never been established by the scientific evidence. Decades of research have produced no definitive biological marker. The American Psychological Association, which has been at the forefront of condemning reparative therapy, acknowledged in its own 2009 task force report that sexual orientation does not appear to be a simple choice — while simultaneously conceding that some individuals reported that change efforts actually resulted in an increased capacity for opposite-sex attraction. More recent research has further complicated the narrative. Data from large longitudinal studies, including work drawn from the Add Health dataset in the United States, have found that a non-trivial number of people who report same-sex attraction in adolescence do not report it in adulthood. Sexuality, for many people, is not a fixed point but a trajectory — and that trajectory, for some, moves in directions the current orthodoxy prefers not to acknowledge. There is also emerging evidence suggesting that identification as gay, lesbian, or bisexual — while still widespread — may have plateaued or even begun declining among younger cohorts, after years of sharp increase. If orientation were purely biological and immutable, such shifts would be inexplicable. Their existence raises questions that honest inquiry ought to welcome. What the Bans Actually Prohibit Laws banning so-called “conversion therapy” in jurisdictions across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere are frequently written so broadly that they effectively prohibit any licensed therapist from assisting a patient in reducing unwanted same-sex attraction — regardless of whether the patient is an adult, regardless of whether the patient sought the therapy of their own free will, and regardless of whether any coercion or harmful technique is involved. What this means in practice is that a twenty-five-year-old man who is a devout Christian, who experiences his same-sex attractions as alien to his faith and his self-understanding, and who freely seeks professional assistance in addressing them, will find that most licensed therapists are legally prohibited from helping him pursue that goal. He may be offered acceptance-based therapy, designed to help him embrace his attractions. He may not be offered assistance in reducing them. This is not neutrality. It is a particular ideological position enforced by law — and, after Chiles, one now on far shakier constitutional ground in the United States than its drafters assumed. The Testimony of Changed Lives Advocates of the current consensus frequently assert that no one has ever successfully changed their sexual orientation, and that those who claim to have done so are either lying, deluded, or in a state of miserable suppression. This claim does not survive scrutiny. There are numerous documented accounts — not anecdotes from fringe ministries, but peer-reviewed studies, including work by Jones and Yarhouse published in 2007 — of individuals who underwent some form of sexual reorientation effort and reported meaningful change: reduced same-sex attraction, increased opposite-sex attraction, and in many cases stable marriages to spouses of the opposite sex. These are not uniformly happy stories, and the researchers were careful to note that outcomes varied widely. But the categorical assertion that change never occurs and cannot occur is empirically false. Moreover, the pastoral witness of theologically orthodox Christian communities — Anglican, Catholic, evangelical Protestant — includes significant numbers of men and women who have chosen celibacy or heterosexual marriage while continuing to experience some degree of same-sex attraction, and who describe this path not as one of suffering and suppression but of vocation, integrity, and genuine flourishing. Their voices deserve to be heard, not dismissed. Freedom of Conscience and the Limits of Tolerance Western liberalism has long prided itself on the protection of minority viewpoints, the defense of individual conscience against majoritarian coercion, and the right of persons to make significant decisions about their own lives without requiring the approval of the state or the dominant culture. These commitments are now under severe pressure. A man or woman of sincere religious conviction who believes that homosexual practice is contrary to the will of God — and who therefore seeks professional assistance in ordering their desires in accordance with that conviction — is being told by governments and professional bodies that their choice is not a legitimate one. Not because they are harming others. Not because they are being coerced. But because the dominant culture has decided that their goal is impermissible. That is a remarkable and troubling development. Whatever one believes about homosexuality — and Christians of good faith hold a range of views — the suppression of voluntary therapeutic options for consenting adults ought to concern everyone who takes seriously the meaning of individual freedom. A Pastoral and Prophetic Word The church's responsibility in this moment is neither to capitulate to cultural pressure nor to pretend that pastoral care for those who experience same-sex attraction is simple. It is not simple. The suffering of men and women who feel caught between their faith and their desires is real and ought to be met with genuine compassion. But compassion does not require endorsement. It does not require the church to tell a man who comes seeking help that his desire to live in accordance with orthodox Christian teaching is itself the problem, or that the only therapeutic path open to him is the one the culture has approved. The church has always believed that human desires, disordered by sin, can by God's grace be redirected — not always easily, not always completely, but genuinely. That belief is not bigotry. It is orthodoxy. America's highest court has just affirmed, by an 8–1 margin spanning its ideological spectrum, that the state has no business dictating which side of this conversation a licensed counselor may take. Britain's Labour Government is about to do the opposite: criminalize the speech of any therapist, pastor, or counselor who helps a willing adult pursue the very goal he came in the door asking for — with a maximum penalty of five years in custody. And the Lords Spiritual, the 26 bishops whose ancient seats exist to bear prophetic witness against the overreach of the state, are not merely silent. They are cheering it on. Dr. Walker did not just welcome this Bill; he made sure no colleague would dare to dissent. A church that will not defend the conscience of the suffering, the voluntary, the consenting adult who simply wants help — against a government wielding the criminal law — has forgotten what it is for. History will not be kind to bishops who mistook capitulation for compassion. — David W. Virtue, DD, is the founder and publisher of VirtueOnline (virtueonline.org), the leading orthodox Anglican news and commentary website.