Archives

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.

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

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

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

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

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