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By Jeffrey Walton JUICY ECUMENISM January 24, 2025   Jesus’ humanness confirms and restores the dignity of all persons, according to an Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) bishop preaching at a prayer service preceding the annual National March for Life.   Missionary Diocese of All Saints Bishop Darryl Fitzwater spoke at the event sponsored by Anglicans for Life and the ACNA Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic held at The Falls Church Anglican outside of Washington, D.C.   Participants at the January 24 prayer service heard testimony from Deacon Georgette Forney as part of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.   “Abortion aftercare programs helped me to grieve for the child that I had aborted,” Forney shared, highlighting the importance of local church ministry among post-abortive women and their families.   “All I did was make myself available and give my sin back to God,” Forney recounted, describing God as taking human brokenness, healing it, and using it to build his Kingdom.   Pro-Life ministry, Forney explained, has expanded to address euthanasia and assisted suicide.   “Everything in God’s Word upholds the sanctity of life,” Forney insisted. “Once life is regarded as a burden or inconvenience, that life begins being treated differently.”   Forney shared her own story of admitting her elderly father to a hospital, with a doctor strongly and repeatedly pressuring him to sign a “Do Not Resuscitate” order in the early hours of the morning. Her father declined to sign the order, but Forney saw it as a sign of how the medical community is changing and that churches need to prepare their congregants for such external pressures.   “If we are going to be change agents for our culture and communities, it will require us to say ‘yes’ to God,” the Anglicans for Life Director charged.   In his sermon, Fitzwater sought to emphasize the unchanging nature of God and his Word.   “If it was ever a sin, it still is. If it was ever his character, it still is,” Fitzwater preached. The West Virginia bishop shared about the spiritual nature of Christ and about his humanity.   “Spiritual does not mean to be ghostly: to be a spiritual people does not mean we are fixed on disembodied things,” Fitzwater noted. “Jesus is so spiritual, he goes around healing physical bodies. Spiritual means the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.”   The Anglican bishop insisted that “Christ is sanctifying the entire family structure.”   “In the cases of life, there are times when the circumstances and scenarios by which a woman becomes pregnant are not ideal, but that life is always sacred. It is always blessed. It is always given dignity,” Fitzwater stated. “The response of the Church must always be: how do we step in to not snuff out a smoldering wick? To not break a bruised reed, but to rightly and truly set bones so that they heal and grow into the fullness of the grace that God has already amply poured out through Jesus Christ.”   Following the service, participants loaded onto buses that took them to the National March for Life beginning at the National Mall in Washington and concluding on Capitol Hill.   “When we go out into this march today, we aren’t just walking with the people next to us, we are enveloped, immersed by a cloud of witnesses whose lives and legacies are pleading to God,” Fitzwater exhorted. “Let us not forget that the chief responsibility, the chief end in those moments, is to join with the prayers of all of God’s people.”   END

By Chuck Collins www.virtueonline.org January 27, 2025   Pelagius is the only heretic specifically mentioned in Anglican’s Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (Article 9). This is for good reason! Everyone is born with “the Pelagian default,” and it takes an act of God to change us. In hundreds of different ways, we reduce Christianity to our own will-power such that we see ourselves as active participants in our redemption - “I have decided to follow Jesus,” working the spiritual disciplines, trying harder and doing more to become better at this Christian life, and maybe even get God’s approval. On January 27, 417 Pelagius was excommunicated, and I am again confronted with the cruelty of my heresy: thinking that righteousness is within my grasp if I just try hard enough. Frankly, it doesn’t help one bit for my recovery that most of the folks sitting next to me are flaming heretics too! In a famous fifth century fight, Pelagius and Augustine argued about what the Bible says about human nature. Pelagius was convinced that individuals have the innate capacity for achievement, even to achieve their own salvation. He felt that men and women are born morally neutral with an equal capacity for good or evil - that Adam's disobedience adversely affected humankind, but only by setting a bad example. Everyone has the responsibility and potential to be righteous; this is God’s command and he would not command the impossible. Augustine, on the other hand, was sure that our human wills are governed by what we love, and that, apart from the Holy Spirit, we choose to love sin. He believed that our love for sin is a consequence of Adam and Eve's original disobedience (the Fall) and that the end result is that all people are spiritually infected: dead in their trespasses and sins and "by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians 2). Saint Augustine saw that we sin because we are sinners (original sin). Much later Martin Luther, the Augustinian monk and priest, would talk about this in a similar way: as people being turned/curved in on ourselves rather than towards God and others (incurvatus in se). It takes the Spirit to work in us to give us a new object worthy of love, and so to free our wills to love God and others. “In Pelagius’s view it was possible (though very unlikely) that a new-born baby would never sin. Perhaps it would gasp once and die, before it had a chance to look upon forbidden fruit. But for Augustine it was already too late for such hopes. The new-born child belonged to a race that lives under the effects of Adam’s sin” (Oliver O’Donovan). Semi-pelagianism, a term coined in the 17th century, was invented to be a compromise between Pelagianism and the teaching of the church fathers (Saint Augustine). Semi-pelagians teach that salvation is won by a cooperative (synergistic) effort between God and his people (God, with a little help from my friends!). Semi-pelagianists distinguish between the beginning of faith and the increase of faith - the beginning of faith is an act of free will (we seek God/truth and find him) and this then ignites grace in us for Christian living and growth. Augustinians, conversely, credit God completely for resurrecting the spiritually dead: people unable in themselves to choose God apart from the prior work of God's grace moving us in the right direction. How is it that Reformation Anglicans remembered pelagianism in their confession a thousand years after Pelagius? In the context of their protest against Medieval Catholicism? How is it that this heresy is the only one specifically named the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion? It is because works-righteousness is the default heresy Medieval Christianity and of all humans in every generation. Only God in his power can turn our wills and affections aright towards God. Anglicans are clearly Augustinian in our anthropology. We believe that men and women, apart from grace, are incapable of doing anything but continue to sin. Article 9 speaks of “the fault and corruption of the nature with which all descendants of Adam are born. It is due to original sin that we are departed very far from the original righteousness in which we were created, and are naturally inclined to evil. . . accordingly, in every person born into this world, original sin is deserving of God’s wrath and condemnation” (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes paraphrase). And the article continues to drill this in, that “this infection of our nature remains even in those who in Christ are reborn.” Article 10 says this even more directly: “Since the fall of Adam man’s state is such that he is unable, by his own natural strength to believe and call upon God.” The second Anglican homily, “The Misery of All Mankind,” is completely devoted to this theme: “For of ourselves we are crabtrees that can bring forth no apples. We are of ourselves of such earth as can bring forth only weeds, nettles, brambles, briers, corncockle, and darnel” (Lee Gatiss edition). Christians love semi-pelagianism because we don't want to admit that the corpse on the couch is actually dead. We insist that we are just faint and need some fresh air. We don't want a Savior who died to destroy death, but instead we prefer a coach that shouts commands and encouragements from the sidelines. We desperately want to believe that in some small way we can contribute to our salvation by "do more" and "try harder" religion, even if it's doing more prayer, Bible reading, and serving to get God's approval. Our default slogan is so good that it almost sounds biblical: God helps those who help themselves. But as Steven Paulson states, “Lazarus did not come out of the grave because he got his free will in motion to choose resurrection; it was because he received an external command from God’s word, which does what it says.”   Dean Chuck Collins is a Reformed Theologian. He is based in Texas.

By Harriet Sherwood, THE GUARDIAN January 26, 2025   The former archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, addressing the House of Lords in 2023. Photograph: House of Lords 2023/Roger Harris/PA Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords by right should be removed as part of the government’s changes to the second chamber, according to the veteran legislator Harriet Harman.   Harman, who was a Labour MP for more than 40 years until 2024, has put forward an amendment to the government’s hereditary peers bill, aimed at ending the automatic right of 26 bishops to sit in the Lords.   Their presence was an anachronism that “undermines the legitimacy” of the second chamber, Harman told the Guardian. “It is outdated that we have legislative scrutiny carried out by representatives of one Christian denomination. The only other legislature that has religious theocrats as members by right is Iran,” she said.   The government was seeking to increase the legitimacy of the Lords by removing the remaining hereditary peers, but that was undermined by the automatic seats for bishops, she said.   Harman’s amendment says the Lords Spiritual, as the 26 bishops are known, must be removed from membership of the Lords, but there should be no bar on individual bishops and archbishops being appointed as life peers.   “If we were starting afresh, I don’t think anyone would give bishops an automatic right to sit in parliament,” she said.   The argument that the bishops provided a moral element in the Lords was spurious, she added. “I don’t think anyone in 2025 believes that morality is the exclusive preserve of the Church of England. This is not about individual bishops or whether they make a good contribution [to the Lords], and it does not arise out of the C of E’s abuse scandals.”   She and other peers backing the amendment had “no intrinsic hostility to religion”, she said. Some would like to see other faiths and denominations represented in the Lords.   Harman said: “Aside from the bishops, I’ve not come across a single peer who thinks that the presence of bishops by right is a good thing. People speak well of individual bishops, but that’s not the point. The point is the legitimacy of the institution.”   Lord Birt, a cross-bench peer and former director general of the BBC, who intends to co-sponsor Harman’s amendment, said: “We are now an incredibly diverse society, comprised of people embracing many religions and beliefs. Embedding the C of E in our legislature is an indefensible, undemocratic anomaly.   “I have the greatest possible respect for the individual qualities and the inherent goodness of leaders I have met in my time from many faiths. I would hope and expect to see faith leaders of every kind represented in a reformed house. But they should be appointed on individual merit, not as exercising a right existing in one form or another for half a millennium.”   Lord Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer, said the presence of bishops by right was “a medieval tradition not serving any effective purpose in the 21st century … We should stop granting special power and privilege to a church that no longer represents the vast majority of citizens that parliament serves”.   According to a recent poll carried out by YouGov for Humanists UK , which is backing Harman’s amendment, 22% of Britons want to keep bishops in the Lords and 52% want them removed.   Harman said she had tabled the amendment to “put down a strong marker” that the Lords Spiritual needed to be included in the government’s overhaul of the House of Lords.   She would also like to see the abolition of titles for life peers, such as baroness and lord. “We are not appointed to have airs and graces, but to do a job of scrutinising legislation. These outdated titles should be done away with.”   END

Two decisions from the Government means those in charge of keeping these Christian icons open are facing an almost insurmountable struggle By Peter Stanford THE TELEGRAPH 26 January 2025 Peterborough’s cathedral has launched an emergency appeal to allow it to pay its bills Credit: Dave Porter The prospect of Peterborough Cathedral running out of money and being forced to close its doors to visitors at the end of March, just as Easter beckons, has made national headlines. This 12th-century Norman masterpiece, burial place of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, has launched an emergency appeal to raise £300,000 in just two months to stave off financial ruin as rising costs and depleted reserves mean it faces being unable to pay its bills. But is it a one-off failure, or are England’s other 42 Anglican cathedrals also facing a similar crisis?    Official Church of England statistics suggest the latter: three-quarters anticipate running a deficit when their 2024 accounts are completed, with just eight predicting a surplus. “All cathedrals are facing considerable financial challenges at the moment,” confirms the Very Revd Dr Simon Jones, Dean of Lincoln Cathedral.   Like Peterborough, he says, Lincoln, for all its size and splendour (its earliest parts dating back to the 11th century) is not on the usual tourist routes. It therefore cannot generate the same income as the other nine cathedrals that, like it, have decided they have to charge visitors an entrance fee (though not worshippers).   “It currently costs us around £25,000 a day to keep the cathedral open,” Jones reports. “At the end of our current financial year in March we will have a deficit of £500,000, and are projecting that there will be deficits in the next three years of £1.5 million, £1.4 million and £1.2 million”.   And all that is before they have factored in the impact of two recent decisions by the new Labour government. “With around 100 staff – not all full-time – the increase in employers’ National Insurance Contributions [NICs] is going to have a significant impact, especially on our efforts to build up our works department. It shrank during the pandemic and we don’t want to be overwhelmed by the task of maintaining one of the greatest buildings in Europe”.   The challenge of finding the money for the uplift in employers’ NIC was also highlighted by Peterborough’s Dean, the Very Revd Chris Dalliston, when he made his appeal for funds. Even with a smaller workforce than Lincoln – the equivalent of 25 equivalent full-time workers – he warned, “we’re facing increases in the living wage and national insurance contributions. We want to be a responsible employer but these things impact our bottom line”.   While Chancellor Rachel Reeves may not have considered the future of England’s cathedrals when she introduced the controversial changes in her budget in October, in their case she might just have imposed the straw that broke the camel’s back.   The second potentially fatal decision came this week when the Heritage Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, a former CofE vicar, announced in the Commons that the Listed Places of Worship scheme, which has allowed cathedrals and historic churches to claim back the VAT of every repair bill over £1,000, was being cut from £29 million last year to £23 million, with a new cap of £25,000 per place of worship.   Chris Bryant spent five years working as an ordained minister.   “It is good news that it will continue for another year because there had been a threat to end it altogether,” reflects Lincoln’s Dean, “but when you spend as much on repairs and restoration as we are doing, the cap will just add to the pressure on our budget, while the continuing uncertainty about whether the scheme will last more than one year makes any sort of planning much harder.”   It is deans who are responsible for the running of cathedrals, the ecclesiastical equivalent of chief executive officers in the secular world. And at the moment they are the ones daily shouldering the burden of keeping open these remarkable buildings – the vast majority Grade I-listed and several UNESCO World Heritage sites.   It is made harder because the number of those attending Anglican services in England remains below the figure pre-Covid in 2019. Fewer worshippers means less money in the plate. While visitor numbers to our cathedrals are climbing, again they have yet to match the 2017 annual figure of 9.38 million.   “As I look out of the window of my study,” says the Very Revd Dr Edward Dowler, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, which celebrates its 950th anniversary this year, “I can see a building that is not going anywhere. But at present we have £3 million going out and only £2.3 million coming in, and with the blow of new NIC charges we are going to have to find that money somewhere.”   Chichester Cathedral was consecrated in 1108. Like Peterborough, his cathedral has little by way of reserves. To keep afloat it has been dipping in each year to legacies that are held in a separate fund, but that, he accepts, is not a reliable long-term solution.    “What you get into is something that I don’t want to do, which is charge for entry. At the end of the day, this is a church and I hate the idea that people will have to pay to come in, but I know that other cathedrals already see it as a necessity if they are to keep open.”   Chichester, he accepts, has some advantages over Peterborough in terms of location. “Tourists have the perception that there aren’t many other reasons to go to Peterborough [than seeing the cathedral]. At the other end of the spectrum are places like Winchester and Salisbury where the cathedral can be taken in as part of a bigger tour of their surrounding areas. We are somewhere in the middle. There are other attractions in Chichester.”   Very Revd Dr Edward Dowler says Chichester Cathedral has a shortfall of £700,000   As well as National Insurance, the cost of utilities shooting up alarmingly is still crippling the books. “Our gas-fired heating may not make the place very warm but it is expensive to keep on. The Church of England has an aspiration to get to net zero by 2030 and there are various plans like air-source heat pumps, but I can’t see how we are going to get there with all the different priorities we are balancing in our day-to-day mission as a cathedral. But everything has a financial angle.”   Over in Somerset, at Wells Cathedral, is Nerys Watts, who has the title Chief Operating Officer and works under the dean, the Very Revd Toby Wright. Each year she has to find £2.7 million to run the building, famous for its 13th-century West Front, the Gothic “scissor arches” in its nave and the splendid stained glass of its Jesse Window.  “Being part of the national heritage,” explains Watts, “costs a lot of money”.   That is why it has recently started charging tourists £14 each to come in, which along with the shop and café, raises around £1 million a year. Add to that around £100,000 in offerings from those attending services, and it still leaves a hole of £1.6 million. “We have to be creative,” she says, so as well as the usual choral and classical concerts, Wells has recently allowed the building to be used for a silent disco (where attendees hear the music through headphones). Wells Cathedral costs £2.7 million a year to run The Church Commissioners manage the £10.4 billion investments held by the Church of England. Some of that, though, was earmarked last spring for a £100m financial downpayment on what the Church hopes will grow into a £1 billion fund to address its legacy of benefitting from the slave trade.   At present the contribution by the Commissioners to the running costs of the nation’s Anglican cathedrals in modest by comparison. They pay the clerical stipends (or salaries) for the Dean and two Canons. “It is quite a small amount in the bigger picture,” acknowledges Lincoln’s Rev Jones.   There are, he points out, specific small pots of money also available from the Commissioners on application to cover individual areas of a cathedral’s life, but he would like to see the national Church adopt “a different funding model that shows it understands the reality that we are facing”.   To that end there is an ongoing review by the Church Commissioners on cathedral funding about which he pronounces himself “hopeful”. But regardless of its outcome, he also wants the government to play a bigger role in the future in the maintenance of these national landmarks.   At present it provides no regular funding to cathedrals. “How things stand now is unsustainable. In France, for instance, the government stepped in and paid for the rebuilding of Notre Dame.”   Lincoln is the only one of the 42 English cathedrals currently on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. Grants are available through the Heritage Lottery, but competition is fierce. The recent repair of its West Front, which can be seen from miles outside the city, received £12.4 million from the fund towards the final cost of £16.2 million, and included a new visitor centre. Yet current conservation projects include £1.5 million on the Chapter House and £500,000 on the Wren Library.   You don’t need to be an accountant to realise the sums don’t add up and that the problems in Peterborough are a siren warning of trouble ahead. “We are but custodians of these spiritual and historic power houses,” says Jo Kelly-Moore, Dean of St Albans Cathedral and chair of the umbrella body the Association of English Cathedrals. “If our cathedrals fall, this will have a huge impact on our nation’s heritage.”   END

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org December 21, 2024 It should be apparent, even to the feeblest minded, that the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops is hiding a modern day ‘brood of vipers” increasingly being exposed as corrupt, as they fail to do their sworn duty to teach and uphold wholesome doctrine, and to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange opinions. Their egregious behavior in upholding sexual positions especially and including homosexual marriage is contrary to scripture is just part of the problem. What is emerging now, courtesy of the feisty blogger Anglican Watch, are bishops who have deliberately turned a deaf ear and the cries of those abused by clergy and their own behavior, all the while these same bishops sanctimoniously uphold diversity raising holy hands of inclusion in the name of their revisionist god. But their days might be numbered. The new incoming Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe is showing some cojones when it comes to bad boy and bad girl bishops. A case in point is his clamp down on the former Bishop of Rochester Prince Singh, of whom it might be said showed nothing princely about his person or diocesan reign. He might have gotten away with the abuse of his wife and two sons under former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, but Rowe has confronted his behavior head on and has suspended him for three years from ministry, holding him personally responsible and accountable for his appalling behavior. Singh, an Indian, got his head handed to him when his two sons wrote a letter to then presiding bishop Michael Curry about their father’s abuse of their mother, a woman he later divorced only to return to India to find an old flame and beat it back to America for his pension and other episcopal goodies. Curry cowardly recused himself thinking perhaps it would all go away, all the while preaching emotional love sermons, making a mockery of the very love that demands accountability. Todd Ousley, the worst intake officer in the church’s history, and recently dumped by Rowe, buried it all hoping that it would all go away. But the sons persisted and went public with knowledge of their father’s abusive behavior. Rowe took up the case and Singh was raked over the coals and told to repent, something bishops are exceedingly bad at doing, largely because they think they are closer to God because their miters point in a heavenly direction. But Rowe nailed him. Here is what he has done. He has  suspended Bishop Singh  for three years in settlement of two of the Title IV clergy disciplinary cases against him. Per the terms of the disciplinary agreement, reinstatement is neither automatic nor guaranteed but rather predicated on the successful completion of mental health and substance abuse treatment and counseling about the appropriate use of power and authority.  Specific provisions under the accord per a letter from  Rowe : ·  Be suspended from ministry for at least three more years. The suspension will conclude only when I am satisfied he is fit for ministry. ·  Undergo a thorough psychiatric and psychological assessment conducted by a professional in the United States designated by me. ·  Participate in truth-telling work related to both sets of allegations. ·  Participate in psychological work, education, and training in domestic abuse as required by me in consultation with a psychological professional. ·  Participate in psychological work, education, and training in anger management, as required by me in consultation with a psychological professional. ·  Participate in psychological work, education, and training in proper exercise of authority, as required by me in consultation with a psychological professional. ·  Undertake work addressing his relationship with alcohol and its behavioral consequences in a program approved by me. ·  Undertake work to address reputational harm suffered by people in the Diocese of Rochester as appropriate. ·  Make visits and apologies to people, congregations, and other groups whom I identify and who are willing. ·  Participate in education and training in Title IV values, process, and procedures. Some of the specific Title IV allegations against Singh are now online and can be found  here . https://www.anglicanwatch.com/bishop-singh-suspended-for-three-years-as-the-episcopal-church-shows-a-glimmer-of-integrity/ To my knowledge No presiding bishop in living memory has been this aggressive. Score one for the youngest presiding bishop in episcopal history socking it to one of the oldest bishops in the church. No love sermons here. But Singh is not the only offender. There are a number of bishops who should be brought up on Title IV charges reported by Anglican Watch . They include: Todd Ousley, Michael Curry, Glenda Curry, and Alan Gates, along with many other Episcopal bishops who are equally guilty of Title IV shenanigans, including knowingly mishandling complaints. Among these bishops are: ·  Clay Mathews , whose behavior during his tenure in the Office of Pastoral Development was every bit as feckless as that of piece-o’-snot Todd Ousley. ·  Alan Gates , who has knowingly brushed off allegations of criminal conduct by clergy in his diocese and gravely mishandled the Anderson case at Church of the Advent. ·  Shannon Johnston , who repeatedly ignored the requirements of Title IV, ranging from the need for a pastoral response to simply saying, “I don’t want to get involved,” even in the face of allegations of criminal conduct by clergy. He also covered up allegations of sexual harassment of an adult woman by Episcopal priest Stephen McWhorter, then canonically resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. ·  George Sumner , whose retaliation against Episcopal priest Rich Daly, support for the sexual harassment of an adult woman, and his deliberate mishandling of an ensuing Title IV complaint warrant immediate suspension. Meanwhile, the Title IV case against Sumner, which was filed with the appropriate intake officer more than a year ago, still has not even cleared the intake phase. ·  Susan Goff , who has refused to forward allegations of criminal conduct by clergy under her supervision to the diocesan intake officer. ·  Jennifer Brooke-Davidson , who also has refused to forward allegations of criminal conduct by clergy under her supervision to the diocesan intake officer. ·  Chilton Knudsen , who has held as acting bishop diocesan, that allegations of criminal conduct by a priest are not “of weighty and material importance to the ministry of the church.” She also has refused to report child sexual abuse to law enforcement on two known occasions. ·  Gayle Harris , who has refused to forward allegations of criminal conduct by clergy to her diocesan intake officer. ·  Paula Clark , who continues to sandbag allegations of perjury by Episcopal priest  Will Bouvel . Additionally, myriad canons to the ordinary, intake officers, and disciplinary board members, including  Bill Parnell ,  Rob Morpeth ,  Melissa Hollerith , and others, need to make themselves scarce or be defrocked. The days of episcopal wine and roses is clearly over. A new dawn has dawned under a new presiding bishop. And he is not prepared to sweep the sins of episcopal bishops under the rug. We will watch with interest to see where it is all going. END

COMMENTARY   By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org January 25, 2025   We should respond to Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde's desperate rantings at Donald Trump with one big collective yawn, wrote one blogger.   He has a point. Her rant at the newly elected president was predictable. Those of us who have been writing about The Episcopal Church over recent decades knew this would happen in the name of “speaking truth to power.”   Marianne Edgar Budde was consistent as she stood in the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, the nation’s pulpit mike in hand.   This was her moment and she was not going to waste it with nice congratulatory words for the 47th president of the U.S.   Her sanctimonious outrage rang with all the inflection of a woke bishop who has imbibed post-modernity, hectoring the president who has been in office less than 24 hours.   There are multiple themes she could have inveighed about. The need for unity in a nation deeply divided; or righteousness that exalts a nation. In a nation of nearly 346 million people there is always someone whose ox is being gored.   Listening to her speech, it wasn’t a sermon, I was made aware of how light it was on the Bible and how heavy on righteous condemnation. Bishop Budde went peak episcopalian.   The gospel hasn’t been heard in her diocese in generations. One is more likely to hear a whiny sermon from Gene Robinson about conservative homophobia or Islamophobia from an outraged Iman.   As one observer noted; “The Episcopal Church is probably the most liberal, not to say progressive, denomination in the USA. It is fully committed to promoting LGBTQ+ rights and treats DEI initiatives as though they had come down from the mountain top written in stone.”   Bishop Budde certainly fulfills that mandate.   She painted a picture of a dystopian America where people live in dread of the coming administration.   Well not everybody feels that way. In fact, Trump garnered considerable Hispanic and Black votes from people who don’t want to see our borders crossed by illegals. The situation is not as black and white as she painted it. Yes, some injustices will occur, they always do. Some people with green cards will be deported. The citizenship of children born in the US to those here illegally is already being challenged in the courts.   On Truth Social, Trump called Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde a “Radical Left hardline Trump-hater” who is “not very good at her job.” He said she “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.”  Well tell me something I don’t know. Trump demanded an apology. I can tell you he will wait a very long time before that happens. She has already signaled she won’t be apologizing to the Don. She made it clear she loathes Donald Trump and was certainly very ungracious.   It is hardly a truism when Trump said she is “not very good at her job.” Most of us have known that for a long time. Nothing new here. With some of America and the world’s leading influencers listening in she had a golden moment to preach that Christ stands over the nations of the world, including the U.S. in judgment; that He is watching and calling people to repentance and faith. She could have brought God’s word to bear on the people. She didn’t. It is doubtful she really believes in any of that. What mattered was preaching her personal political views in the hope of changing the president’s mind and humiliating him in public. Judging by the responses on social media she singularly failed.   Michael Curry the former Presiding Bishop would probably have delivered himself of a love bomb, which might have brought a few smiles to some faces, but it is doubtful he would have gone after the president as she did; neither I think would Sean Rowe the new PB who is singularly silent on Budde’s rant. If he is cringing at 815 2nd Avenue, in New York, the church’s headquarters, someone might want to take him out for a drink to help him recover. It’s the very least they could do.   END

Prayer Meeting at the Washington National Cathedral Turns Political   By Albert Molher THE BRIEFING January 22, 2025   Since the 1933 inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President of the United States, it has been traditional for a service of prayer to be held in connection with a presidential inauguration. It’s basically taken place every inaugural ceremony since 1933, and more often than not it has taken place in what is known as the National Cathedral.   That service took place Tuesday (Jan. 21)  and in attendance was the President of the United States, along with Mrs. Trump and the Vice President of the United States, along with Mrs. Vance, members of Congress, including the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and many others. It was not a public service in terms of being open to the public, but by now, many among the public know that in the service yesterday, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C. directly addressed the new president and did so with words of appeal and judgment.   Many on the Left will simply refer to this, in the language of the ’60s, as “speaking truth to power,” but what we actually witness there is liberal, very liberal, Episcopalianism running into a headlong collision with President Trump and the Trump administration. And as you look at what the bishop had to say, you recognize it was all very calculated.   Bishop Marianne Budde said to the President: “In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” She spoke of migrants, she said, particularly children, “Who fear that their parents will be taken away.” She also asked the President to consider: “The gay, lesbian, transgender children in Democratic Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.”   It was theatrical language, but it was intended to be theater.   Now, let’s just look at the background of what in the world is going on here. First of all, we have the phenomenon of what is known as an “interfaith service.” Now, I’ll just be blunt about this. I would not participate, as a Christian minister, in an interfaith service. This was a very pressing issue, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.   All over the United States communities and others, very famously at the national level in Washington D.C., were organizing interfaith services, but I could not participate because given my Christian convictions I cannot participate in a service in which the spiritual direction is towards some generic god in general, the deity referenced, if referenced at all, is ambiguous or for that matter, by a Christian estimation, an absolutely idolatrous religion. That is to say we can have good relationships with people of other faith, we cannot have a worship service with them. The moment you say interfaith service from a Christian perspective, the participants are going to be the kinds of Christians who can participate in interfaith services, so that is something that takes place overwhelmingly on the theological Left.   Now, remember, the location is also significant. We talked just a matter of days ago on the briefing about the National Cathedral as it is usually known. I mentioned then that even back in the original design of Washington D.C., Pierre L’Enfant had suggested there needed to be a great national church.  That was not built when Washington was first occupied and first became the nation’s capital. And as a matter of fact, what is known now as the National Cathedral was really begun only in the early years of the 20th century. It was completed only in the closing years of the 20th century. It is a grand building. It is one of the largest Gothic structures you will ever see. It is majestic sitting there on a very prominent spot in the area of Washington D.C.   But it’s also important to recognize that even as it is the cathedral seat of the Episcopal diocese in Washington D.C., it was also intended from the beginning to be something of a national church. And the moment you say that you recognize in the United States that becomes a problem, because there is no national church that is under any direct sponsorship of the United States government. It is a quirk in all of this that the United States Congress, back about 1903 or so, did give a charter to what became the National Cathedral. But one of the problems with this is that the National Cathedral is going to have to represent just about every faith tradition in the nation. On the one hand, it is an Episcopal cathedral, on the other hand it is the National Cathedral, and that’s why these kinds of services are held there.   The reason we talked about it recently is because the National Cathedral hosted the state funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, but it also hosted this service. And as I said, in most inaugurations since 1933 there has been some service as a part of the formalities held in the National Cathedral.   In this case, it wasn’t scheduled for Monday, the schedule was too busy already, it was scheduled for Tuesday. And so it was the President of the United States inaugurated the day before, the Vice President of the United States, inaugurated the day before who were basically set upon by the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C.   Now here’s what’s really interesting. When you look at this, you recognize that, as I said earlier, the kind of Christian minister who would participate in an interfaith service is well, the kind of Christian minister who would participate in an interfaith service. That’s a very designated group. The same thing is true when it comes to denominations.   A denomination that would be able to have, say, a diocesan cathedral that would be the diocesan seat of the bishop, and at the same time a national cathedral holding interface services. Well, you would look at a very interesting pattern here that would simply come down to a mathematical formula of one, and that would be in particular the Episcopal Church.   And that’s because the Episcopal Church, which after all is the American branch of Anglicanism, which hearkens back to the Church of England, which is of course a state church. When you consider the Episcopal Church in the United States, it was never at the national level a state church.   But it was in some ways the established denomination, and that’s because so many members of Congress, so many Justices of the Supreme Court, so many presidents of the United States, had deep Anglican or Episcopal roots. The Episcopal Church has been, from the very beginning in the United States, an elitist church, which is to say it caters to and tends to attract people from a certain socioeconomic background. I want to be clear that’s not universally true, it is just sociologically manifested.   And, for one thing, the Episcopal Church has been very proud of its out sized political clout, its out sized cultural and social clout. The Episcopal bishop, in most communities throughout the United States, is someone who would have a good deal of influence and a good deal of voice. But the other thing you need to note about the Episcopal Church is that along with the other major denominations of liberal Protestantism, it has basically been in severe decline, particularly in terms of membership for the course of the last several decades, and that has been tied to a theological collapse.   The Episcopal denomination, the Episcopal Church in the United States is now one of the most liberal religious bodies imaginable. Now, note carefully, I’m not saying that there are no persons of evangelical or conservative orthodox belief within the Episcopal Church. I’m just saying that if they are in the Episcopal Church, they’re the kind of, well, the kind of person who can hold those beliefs and still be in the Episcopal church, which is overwhelmingly liberal. It has been for decades now avidly pro-LGBTQ, for same-sex marriage, but even before then, the great liberal turn, which took place in liberal Protestant world back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it basically was set loose in the second half of the 20th century with absolutely no braking system whatsoever.   Let me just also point to an obvious factor when it comes to the Episcopal Church, it has never been Evangelical in terms of its general witness. It holds to infant baptism, and it was basically quite happy to be restricted to an elite component of society. But even as there has been a demographic revolution in the United States matched to a theological revolution in the Episcopal Church, decades ago the Wall Street Journal ran a very memorable editorial entitled “The Episcopal Church Goes The Way of the Dodo.” Just in case you had to look that up. It means to extinction. Back when she was installed as the bishop, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., the Washington Post described her as “unapologetically liberal.” And of course she is, and what she addressed to the president was basically the voice of liberal culture, and unsurprisingly, she went right to the LGBTQ issues.   Remember that in his inaugural address, President Trump had said that he would establish an executive order. It was actually a part of a larger complex of many executive orders that would say that for the purposes of the federal government there would be only two genders and that would be male and female. And furthermore, he stipulated, or at least his executive order stipulated that the distinction here is between sperm and eggs, or described as the larger reproductive cell and the smaller reproductive cell. Yes, it gets that technical, but it’s a sign of the times that if you’re going to be clear on these issues these days, when there is such widespread confusion, you have to be just that technical.   One point we just have to make here is that when you have liberal theology it leads to a liberal understanding of everything, including gender and sexuality. But you also have to work the logic the other way. When you are confronted by the view on, say, sexuality and gender held by this Episcopal bishop, you have to know that that is based upon a prior revolution towards theological liberalism. All of this, of course, goes back to doctrines as fundamental as the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Scripture. Everything else after that simply follows. Liberal at the start, you’ll be liberal at the end and at every point liberal in the middle.   The other point I want to make is simply the political point that in that context, the bishop knew exactly what she was doing and the President knew exactly what she was doing. After the ceremony, he was asked what he thought, and he spoke about it pretty clearly. He told news crews, “Not too exciting, was it? They could do much better.”   Historically, it is important to note just how revolutionized the Episcopal Church has become, and it’s not just what this Episcopal bishop had to say, it is the very fact that it was a SHE who said it that represents in its own way the revolution within the Episcopal Church. Largely the same revolution throughout most of all liberal Protestantism.   END

By Niall McCrae https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/ January 14, 2025 TO describe the scene as Armageddon is no hyperbole. For those who have never visited Los Angeles, the posh neighbourhoods are well known from popular movies and songs: Bel Air, Malibu and Sunset Boulevard. A local man  happened to film  these exclusive Beverly Hills areas just before the fire in which the Pacific Palisades were destroyed.  The devastation seems to symbolise something much bigger: the fall of Western civilisation. California would be a fitting site for such a human tragedy: it is home to the most affluent people in the world, from Hollywood celebrities to Big Tech innovators, who have emphatically supported the Democrat party. State Governor Gavin Newsom has presided over extreme woke policies and Net Zero puritanism but the LA blaze, perhaps, suggests that we have passed the point of no return . For Doug Casey, author of  Crisis Investing , Western civilisation is certainly collapsing. In an interview on his  International Man  website, he explains that ‘it’s unique among the world’s civilisations in putting the individual – as opposed to the collective – in a central position’. Rational thinking was enshrined over mysticism, enabling the rise of science, technology and principled governance. I wrote on the demise of individualism back in 2019, before the contrived pandemic, when the greater good was enforced with draconian lockdown and coercive vaccination programme.  The long march of individualism comes to a juddering halt , my essay on the  Human Events  website, argued that while much of the developing world is on a liberalising trajectory, the West is reversing towards collectivism. Younger generations are being raised as pawns of the state, while they are fooled by the convenience, comfort and safety of the digital matrix. As Casey remarks, civilisation always collapses from within. The rot appeared in the First World War, although ‘termites were already eating away at the foundations, with the writings of people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx’. Creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 was significant: whereas the dollar was previously the equivalent of a twentieth of an ounce of gold, paper notes became receipts for money which did not physically exist. People lost control of the value of cash in their wallets. Fast-forward to quantitative easing, inflation, enormous debt and a looming financial crisis and there is no certainty of us keeping our homes, whether we own them or not. The average Americans’ standard of living has dropped since their government abandoned the dollar’s last link to gold in 1971, as the fiat currency has devalued capital and discouraged saving. The state determines the value of assets, and stability has been overridden by speculators and central bank manipulation. Money is made from any economic turmoil, as in the global meltdown in 2007-2008, when the international banking set prospered. As Casey says: ‘One hundred years ago, the richest people in the country – the Rockefellers, the Carnegies – made their money creating industries that actually made stuff. Now, the richest people in the country just shuffle money around. They get rich because they’re close to the government and the hydrant of currency materialised by the Federal Reserve.’ A cashless society will put banks in total control, and Casey regards this as the death knell of Western civilisation. ‘The government will be able to monitor every transaction and payment. Financial privacy will literally cease to exist. In a primitive society, in your little dirt hut village, anybody can look through your window or pull back the flap on your tent. You have no privacy. This was one of the marvellous things about Western civilisation – privacy was valued, and respected. But that concept is on its way out.’ According to Casey, the metastasising state is undoing Western morality. ‘What keeps a truly civil society together isn’t laws, regulations, and police. It’s peer pressure, social opprobrium, moral approbation and your reputation. These are the four elements that keep things together. Western civilisation is built on voluntarism. But, as the State grows, that’s being replaced by coercion in every aspect of society.’ Casey warns that the West is going the same way as imperial Rome. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that the more corrupt a society, the more the laws, but the relationship is not always in one direction. Tony Blair’s administration passed plenty of laws as it sought to destroy the forces of conservatism.  Similarities with the fall of Rome are poignant: self-absorption of the elite, falling birth rate and uncontrolled immigration. Late emperors looked on the masses with contempt. Hitherto leadership was by a priestly class, paternalistic but dutiful towards their charges. Today’s professional-managerial class enjoy privilege and power, and feel that they deserve it regardless of the worsening experience and outcomes for the people below them.  ‘Diversity is strength’ is the progressive doctrine, but it is patently false. The liberal West was built on social cohesion, and so its destruction is achieved by undermining it. When people cannot relate to their neighbours, or trust them, they will turn to the state for their needs. Enlightenment values are subverted by Cultural Marxist identity politics, with favoured minorities and stakeholders. Covering the Californian fires, YouTuber Antony Daniels featured  Mel Gibson , who criticised the leadership failures of Newsom (he should spend less on hair gel). Reading between Gibson’s lines, Daniels mused on the possibility that LA is being cleared for a purpose. The state coffers, emptied by the cost of tackling the fires, will miss millions of dollars in property taxes. But for years California has been pushing people out, replaced by a tidal wave of immigrants with no rights or property, while decriminalising drug abuse and shoplifting. In the 1980s the hip-hop band NWA rhymed furiously on the rich-poor divide in LA, and the police force that maintained it. But the lyrical provocation of  Straight outta Compto n  was relatively harmless, compared with the damage wreaked by the white Californian establishment. The fires are not the only cause of the LA clearance. For those spared by the flames, insurance companies will refuse to cover their properties. Consequently, banks will therefore not lend money, and existing mortgages will be revoked. This is becoming more obviously a controlled demolition, to ‘build back better’ for a two-tier humanity of a predatory class lording over a majority reduced to neo-feudalism. Some of the richest residents of Los Angeles are discovering, to their horror, which side of the tracks they will be on.

American public pushes back on transgender and nonbinary positions   COMMENTARY   By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org January 15, 2025   As more states take action to protect female athletes from trans ideology, a new survey shows that a vast majority of US parents oppose this wokeism from infecting public schools.   The poll, sponsored by the parental rights advocacy group Parents Defending Education and conducted by CRC Research, is based on responses collected from 1,000 American parents of children 18 years old or younger from Dec. 12-18, 2024.   Only 19% of these parents agree that a school "should help a child change their [sic] gender identity." That is code for changing a child's name or preferred pronouns, allowing him to identify and dress as the opposite sex, and wearing breast binders, all without notifying their parents.   By contrast, 80% of parents said they disagreed with schools taking such an approach, with 62% strongly disagreeing.   The results also suggest an overwhelming opposition to “teachers, counselors, school nurses, classroom aides, coaches or administration withholding information about a child’s gender identity from parents.”   An overwhelming majority (75%) disagreed that schools should keep their student's gender identity from parents, with 59% expressing strong opposition to such a move. Only 24% supported withholding information about trans-identified students’ gender identities from parents.   You would think that ordinary Episcopalians reading this should put trans insanity behind them and join the world of normal and insist on a male-female foundation for sexual ethics. But apparently that is not going to happen.   The Episcopal Church which has been swinging the other way on the issue, now finds itself at loggerheads with the culture and the majority of American parents.   This is a foolish and dangerous place to be in. Having won the culture wars on homosexuality, LGBTQI and homosexual marriage, TEC’s deep thinkers believe they can move forward on the rocky road of nonbinary sex and persuade its small, aging congregations to follow them.   TransEpiscopal, a group that advocates for more inclusive church policies toward transgender people, joined The Episcopal Church’s Department of Gender Justice and Department of Racial Reconciliation, Justice and Creation Care in hosting a Jan. 13 webinar titled “Defending the Dignity of Trans and Non-Binary People in 2025 and Beyond.” Nearly 700 people registered for the Zoom event.   Aaron Scott, the church’s gender justice officer and a trans man, facilitated the webinar’s discussion. He stressed the need for Episcopalians to collectively advocate for transgender and nonbinary rights, not individually.   As a church, “we need to be more tightly in step with one another, maybe more than we have ever been before,” Scott said during the webinar. “When it comes to supporting one another and sharing information about how we are finding our way, we do not really need lone rangers right now, and we cannot afford to operate in isolation.”   In the lead-up to Election Day, now President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, amped up their opposition to all LGBTQ+ rights, especially transgender and nonbinary rights, using demeaning language at rallies, in interviews, on social media and in campaign videos.   If Episcopalians need to ask why Harris lost and Trump won, it is here in black and white. It is this writer’s contention that culture war issues played a much bigger role in the last election than border, money and jobs.   Americans are fearful, watching as they see their country going down the moral drain; and while Trump is no picture of moral perfection, he has stood with conservative parents on this most basic of issues: what does it mean to be human.   Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment didn’t begin with the U.S. election season, however; it has grown steadily in recent years. One day after the webinar, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports at federally funded schools and educational institutions.   When he was in office President Obama proclaimed June to be the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender [don't forget Transgender] Pride Month." Every federal worker and member of the armed forces received a presidential proclamation in their email. It labels all opposition to homosexual behavior as "prejudice," which, in effect, declares all traditional Christians to be bigots and enemies of the state's ideology of sexual "diversity."   "Hate speech" nowadays is usually nothing more than speech that the Left hates, particularly any questioning of the "trans" or "gay" agenda. The Left is also great at using hateful speech against faithful Christians, says Robert A. J. Gagnon a sexual ethics theologian.   The mounting opposition put Donald Trump back in the White House.   This is not about homophobia or transphobia; it is about a fundamental issue of definition and behavior.   Did not God create ‘male and female’? Genesis 1:27 states that God created humankind in His own image, both male and female. This phrase emphasizes the binary nature of human creation and God's authority. Jesus reaffirmed ‘male and female’ in his discourse on the family. “Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female?” – Mt. 19:4.   The Episcopal Church is out of step with the vast majority of Americans and 80 million Anglicans globally. Not even the Church of England has openly embraced transgenderism, though give it time and it probably will.   The church still has a role to play in terms of being salt and light for the culture at large in matters of sexual ethics. Now is the time to speak out if this insanity is to be reversed.   END

By John Stonestreet, G. Shane Morris, www.christianpost.com January 12, 2025   According to a recent report from statistician Ryan Burge, the belief in miracles has risen in recent years among the college-educated, the group most correlated with materialistic beliefs. In 1991, just 45% of Americans with a bachelor’s degree said they “definitely believe” in miracles. However, according to the U.S. government’s General Social Survey, that number climbed to 63% by 2018. The change was even more dramatic among those with graduate-level degrees. In 1991, a mere 30% of those with at least a master’s degree believed in miracles. By 2018, that number had jumped to 61%.   Apparently, education is no longer the de-supernaturalizing influence it once was. In fact, those with higher education are as likely to believe in miracles as those without higher education. However, these surprising numbers are part of the larger story of Western secular society.   The standard prediction about the West has been that the growth and expansion of technology would continue to make us more secular and that more secular would mean less belief in God and the supernatural. But, the percentage of atheists and agnostics in America has hardly budged, even among the group Burge refers to as the “non-religious.” Even the so-called “Great de-Churching” has not been a mass conversion to atheism, but rather an explosion of what sociologists call “nones,” people with no religion in particular.    Making sense of this apparent contradiction requires rethinking what it means to be “secular.” For example, just as rejecting religion is not the same as rejecting the supernatural, so an increased openness to the supernatural should not be equated with religious revival. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has suggested that the softening toward “signs and wonders” among college-educated Americans may simply reflect “the general resilience of supernaturalism.” This is not the same thing as embracing faith, Christian or otherwise. Put differently, there is such a thing as a secular spirituality, and that may be what we are seeing today.    In the middle of the 20th century, the eminent sociologist Peter Berger proposed the “secularization thesis.” He speculated that as societies advanced into the modern, scientific age, religion would lose its grip on people. In its place would be a secularism that, among other things, was marked by a rejection of anything supernatural.    Decades later, Berger renounced this thesis, recognizing the resilience of religion. For example, the world had become more religious, not less. Christianity is projected to number 2.7 billion or 33.8% of the world’s population soon, while atheism and the non-religious are declining as a percentage of world population.    In this sense, the West is an outlier. However, it’s not clear that Berger’s self-rejected thesis was wrong. More than 25 years ago, another observer argued that the form of secularism overtaking our society wasn’t Dawkins-style materialism. Rather, it was the tendency to think about the world and to live not as if God does not exist, but as if He were largely irrelevant. In his book The Way of the Modern World, Dr. Craig Gay suggested that our modern, consumeristic and, yes, secular world elevated convenience, control, and choice above all other values. Thus, we may still “believe” in God and want spirituality, but our approach mimics shopping or eating at a buffet, in which we pick and choose what we like rather than relying on the authority of Scriptures, traditions, or creeds.    In this view, the West is as deeply secular about spirituality as about technology, politics, or anything else. An example is the disturbing video that recently went viral which portrayed white-collar Americans on an ayahuasca retreat in Central America. Spiritual tourism is big business, and these tourists, sitting in the dirt violently vomiting from hallucinogenic drugs while local guides wiped their chins, were willing to pay for their manufactured “miracle.”    The growth of spiritual secularism, or secular spiritualism, does not disprove the secularization thesis, but it does reframe it. To be clear, the understanding of spirituality that has emerged in the West is as far from Christian as the non-spirituality that was predicted. The mixing and matching approach suits customers who believe they are in charge, and that the right techniques will give them the convenience, control, and choice Gay described, even beyond the physical world.    Some, including higher profile former secularists, are by God’s grace finding the One who is the Truth and actually in charge of the universe. Others are finding themselves, in this increasingly popular marketplace of secular spirituality, deep in pagan darkness, subjected to forces they can’t possibly understand, let alone command. Which is why the increased openness to miracles among educated Americans is mixed news.     Secular spirituality is far from revival. Christians know of these other forces capable of counterfeit “miracles” but that lead away from the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This should cause us to cry out for mercy for those who are being deceived.   Originally published at BreakPoint.   John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics.

By Chuck Collins www.virtueonline.org January 13, 2025 Lex orandi, lex credendi - the law of prayer is the law of believing. It’s an ancient saying that dates back to the 5th century (Prosper of Aquitaine) that’s used to show the connection between what we pray and what we believe. But it has been retooled in modern times to justify our designer liturgical appetites.  This has long been the case in mainline denominations who institutionally have weak or no credendi, except “what feels right.” And sadly, the Anglican Church in North America seems to be heading in the same direction. When our worship language and practices do not line up with our theology (Thirty-nine Articles, the Homilies, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer), when we define ourselves in conciliar terms (Anglo-catholics, charismatics, and evangelicals gathering in one boat with fingers secretly crossed) rather than in theological and confessional ways, the friction this makes indicates a very unsettled and unsure future.  Erik Erickson wrote of an awkward psychosocial stage that adolescents go through in the process of discovering who they are. As a new denomination, the ACNA is stuck in that preteen stage having to make some adult decisions about our future. It maybe sounds confusing, but it’s really simple: a choice between two ways. Either we stick to a conciliar (a big boat) understanding of Anglican identity that we received from our dead parents and slug our way through the fog and this present time of indisposition, or we reinvest in what has defined Anglicans and catholic Christians for many centuries. The first option makes theology a radically secondary matter for the sake of unity focused around our disdain for homosexual marriage and, for some, women priests. The latter moves us theologically towards permanent Anglican identity grounded in a Reformation tradition that is thoroughly biblical, theologically confessional and reformed, liturgically beautiful, and pastorally generous. If we take the “conciliar road,” as Archbishop Duncan urged us to do at the 2008 GAFCON meeting in Jerusalem, we need to do something with those nagging Anglican formularies. We can ignore them like many already do, or we can dispose of them in more official ways. For example, we could write a new catechism and Prayer Book to reflect a happy meeting place for all Anglican expressions - oops, that’s what we’ve been doing for ten years! We could also rewrite our Constitution and Canons to eliminate the historic Anglican formularies as our theological standard and try to persuade our GAFCON partners to do the same.  This would work if it didn’t look to be as “progressive” as those nasty folks we left. If the conciliar road is our way, we have to retire the Articles of Religion in some way, especially those particularly irritating ones that state that the corrupted nature of everyone and our opposition to Pelagianism, that speaks of the church and its traditions as subordinate to Holy Scripture and the councils having erred at times in matters of faith, that predestination is an unspeakable sweet comfort for godly persons as the Bible says, that there are two sacraments which communicate God’s grace to those who, with faith, receive the same, and that Anglican worship and ceremonial will be guided by the one overriding rubric of justification by grace through faith alone. If we can’t shelf the formularies because we don’t want to appear progressive like our foes, then I have a modest proposal, that we add a 40th Article: “Anyone who does not subscribe to the forgoing may change any to suit their personal aesthetic tastes. This applies to individuals, churches, and whole dioceses.” The alternative of course, is to revisit and rediscover our historic landmarks, the old paths. This means allowing our theology to guide our worship and our personal aesthetic preferences - credendi leading orandi. Even though most American Anglicans are functionally Lutheran (or even Roman Catholic without the word “transubstantiation”), I hold out hope that we can recapture a historic Anglican understanding of the sacraments whereby God-given grace is received by God-given faith, that honors God as the consecrator of the bread and wine not some priest intermediary saying and doing magical things for the people. And even though we are inclined institutionally to put the ancient undivided church over Holy Scripture or to consider the Bible as a product of the church, it’s not too late to cede to the God-inspired revelation of God to his people. It’s not too late for bishops to authorize worship that brings us each time to the glorious doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ, rather than allowing each priest and each church to do whatever they want. The Episcopal Church has already determined its fate, but not so the ACNA. This is the time to repent and return to our first love. The direction we are facing is not good, but there’s nothing that says we can’t challenge and change the course. Pray for our bishops that we will see again the beauty of our confessional identity that’s rooted in the ultimate authority of the Bible. Enkindle in them and in us a love for true doctrine (2 Timothy 4:3). Give us all a love for those who have not yet believed the gospel of God’s unstoppable and unconditional love. Lex orandi lex credendi, indeed!, with unity that comes from a right understanding of God and a love for his people! Dean Chuck Collins is a Reformed Anglican theologian

By Gavin Ashenden  CHRISTIAN TODAY 11 January 2025   Justin Welby addressing the Church of England Synod. (Photo: Church of England) Monday 6 January marked the last working day of Justin Welby as Archbishop Canterbury. His resignation was forced on him after his failure to act competently in the oversight of a devastating sexual abuse scandal. But it would be unfair to take that single act of incompetence and use it as a lens to judge his entire performance as Archbishop. Tragic though the end of his tenure was, we need to look at the other elements of the way he held office in order to assess it fairly.   There are four areas in which an archbishop needs to be competent in order to justify that existence: parish, province, communion and country. As regards the parish, ecclesially the C of E has always embodied two theologies it holds in tension: congregationalism - the priority of the parish on one hand; and episcopacy - the authority of the bishop on the other. The Archbishop of Canterbury has to find a way of balancing this contradiction, and at the same time motivate and enable the flourishing of parish churches and communities. This balance has always been very difficult to achieve.   As senior Archbishop he has to try to hold together and facilitate the two Provinces and the bureaucratic machinery which serves the Church as an organisation. Most people don't understand that the institution is organically so complex that the normal levers of management you might expect hardly exist. Welby set himself the task of creating them in order to control the organisation better. It didn't work.   The international Anglican Communion is chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury by historic right. He is chairman of the forty two autonomous provinces of the Anglican Communion, and needs to be able hold them together in the absence of any concept of authority. The provinces were just about to pass a historic resolution repudiating his right of chairmanship and replacing it with an election instead, that he would have lost.   The Archbishop needs also to be able to connect with the nation, the majority of whom have no allegiance to the faith or the Church by exemplifying the best and truest aspects of Christianity. Despite his platform at both the royal funeral and coronation, the nation never took him to its heart. Sadly for Welby, nowadays appearance counts for a good deal. Michael Ramsey and Rowan Williams at least looked like different versions of what people hoped an archbishop should look like - and looking as though you are suited for the role has become an even more important aspect of functionality in an age where image plays such a powerful part in our assessment of things.   It wasn't Justin Welby's fault that he looked like a slightly crumpled, middle-ranking bank branch manager, but neither did it help inspire confidence or affection. Welby's predecessors during the last century all excelled in at least one of these four areas. Tragically, Welby failed in all four.   The task was never going to be an easy one. The Church of England is an organisation like no other. It is immensely complex, lacking all kinds of instrumentation for governance. It is the hybrid to beat all hybrids. It was born as an organic compromise of different political and theological parties and groups coming together to keep at bay the alternatives they all feared more than they feared each other. Holding it together meant finding some kind of working balance for the successors of the Puritans (evangelicals), the Sacramental nostalgics (Anglo-Catholics), and the spiritually-minded socialists (liberals).   It used to be that they took turns under the protective patronage of their respective archbishops. But rather to everyone's surprise, that game has changed over the last 30 years. The culture has redefined everyone's allegiance in the Church just as much as elsewhere. The shadows of the Reformation battles have grown suddenly dim as a new shift of conceptual tectonic plates reconfigures Western society.   The advent of feminism and following quickly afterwards, the attempt to legitimise same-sex relationships not only divided secular society but also split all the tribes that constituted the historic Anglican factions. Welby kept up the appearance of neutrality for a while, but it seems as if his patience suddenly snapped. And that snapping took place months before personal debacles. Conservatives see his abandoning of historic Christian ethics as the metaphysical cause of his downfall. Whether that is true or not, it is the case that after that public gesture of impatience with the Biblical position - when Welby suddenly came off the fence and came out in personal favour of the legitimisation of homosexual relationships - his demise followed swiftly.   Welby presided over a sudden shift in theological and ideological culture that changed the shape of the tribal equilibrium in the Church of England. In fact, it was during the last 30 years that the landscape of theological and philosophical conflict embodied in the Reformation and its aftermath, changed profoundly and dramatically. It was no longer a matter of Protestant versus Catholic so much as progressive versus non-progressive.   One of the primary responsibilities of the Archbishop of Canterbury was to hold together both the Church of England, but also the Anglican Communion which emerged from the evangelisation of the British Empire. Despite his own profound personal preferences, Rowan Williams managed to hold the warring factions together with a skilful chairmanship that practised a diplomatic inaction.   Welby lacked both the intelligence and the diplomatic stature of Rowan Williams. He was unable to hide his preference for the progressive sexual agenda of the liberal faction. Where Williams took the trouble to ensure the episcopacy represented all the constituencies of the Church, under Welby only theological look-a-likes stood much chance of preferment. He was ideologically tribal before he was pastorally competent.   Perhaps the welfare of the parishes were a sign of his greatest failure. Under his tenure the parishes felt ignored, demoted and demoralised. It wasn't just the mountain of red tape that imposed impossible safeguarding burdens on elderly ladies who turned up to implement the flower rota, or churchwardens who became overwhelmed by bureaucratic overkill - as did their clergy.   Parishes were wholly demoralised on a series of fronts, when for example they found themselves robbed of their own capacity to make decisions for their own survival. They became unable, for example, to install new boilers to replace brown ones to keep people warm during evensong in winter, because the institutional bureaucracy had committed to an ecological Net Zero and re-written the rules to impose it.   Faced with the enormous difficulties of raising enough money to repair the roof, the infrastructure and pay for pastoral ministry, the pensioners on whom the church depends - the average age of congregations being about 70, the parishes were demoralised once again. Justin Welby dramatically and publicly committed himself to spending the investment resources of the Church Commissioners on the sixth generation descendants of slaves in reparation. It didn't matter that academic historians pointed out that the Church had, in fact, not benefited directly from slave income at all. The exercise turned out to be more about virtue signalling and the woke revisionist rewriting of history, without regard either to whether reparation should be done, or could be done.   Then there is Welby's appointment itself as Archbishop of Canterbury, following a startlingly and somewhat incomprehensible rapidity of promotion, which included very little parish experience. It was the product of a change in fashion driven by the former human resources admin from British Gas who became secretary to the Crown Appointments Commission. Instead of appointing experienced parish clergy balanced by spiritually-minded academics to the episcopate, a decision was made to exclusively appoint middle-managers who had experience in the business world before ordination.   It is certainly true that organisation with the internal contradictions of the Church of England is impossible to manage. The contradiction is that it is effectively driven by the parish, while at the same time being cosmetically directed from the episcopate. This has always been an almost impossible balance to maintain constructively, but under Welby, the balance was destroyed completely. He tried to create the levers of control and management efficiency that the business model might suggest, but they proved counter-productive by moralising, and diminishing the integrity and morale of the parish. Towards the end of his tenure, Welby even saw the rise of the Save the Parish movement. It was a grassroots movement directed by some extremely competent people who were afraid that Welby's managerial blinkeredness was going to destroy the very raison d'etre of the Church of England.   In the area of representing Anglicans in the public space to the rest of the population, and the interests of the rest of the population to the Church of England Welby opted for the easiest and most destructive course. He used the House of Lords as a soapbox for left-wing progressive politically-correct views and, his critics claimed, vacuous political propaganda.   He might have got away with this had he been representing the Anglican mind in the country. But endless social surveys showed that the people in the pews were by a large majority committed to looking at the world through centrist or conservative lenses. They were badly alienated from Welby and the rest of the episcopate who were speaking as if they were paid up members of the Labour party. Only one single bishop spoke in favour of Brexit for example.   As many critics pointed out, this wasn't just a disparity between the people in the pews and the managers. Neither Welby, nor his fellow bishops, managed to talk much about God or Jesus or discipleship, or the Kingdom of Heaven or redemption in the House of Lords. They stuck to socialism.   If you employ a manager to manage the Church and he fails to manage, the consequences are bound to be bad. The Smyth abuse case was a terrible tragedy. All Welby's inept managerial instincts might have been redeemed by just dealing with that one crisis well. Instead, he ignored the victims, allowed subordinates to kick the can down the road, appeared to be covering for his own culture, and forgot that justice delayed is justice denied.   Although he attempted to present his resignation as taking a bullet for the team and resigning on behalf of the whole inept, safeguarding incompetence of the Church of England, it remains a fact that he was personally responsible. He knew about the crisis from the 1980s. And so, when the facts first appeared over his desk, at a point where he had institutional responsibility, no excuse exists for his inactivity. Yet his tone deaf speech in the House of Lord displayed his moral and existential deafness in a way that many found profoundly offensive.   As just one example of his flawed moral judgement, people pointed to his support of Paula Vennells for the bishopric of London. It beggared belief in the judgement of many that a woman who not only had no experience of ministry in the parishes, but had failed catastrophically in institutional management - and as it turned out, proved to be unkind, incompetent and unaccountable - could be his preferred candidate to become bishop of London.   Welby failed the parishes by demoralising them, he failed the Anglican Communion by being unable to restrain his progressive partisanship, he failed the organisation by 'doing management' badly, and he failed the country by offering it socialism instead of Christianity. He is probably the worst Archbishop of Canterbury in living memory. Only historians are equipped to judge whether he was the worst Archbishop of all time.   Gavin Ashenden is Associate Editor of the The Catholic Herald and a former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II.