"Do nothing that you would not like God to see. Say nothing you would not like God to hear. Write nothing you would not like God to read. Go no place where you would not like God to find you. Read no book of which you would not like God to say, "Show it to Me." Never spend your time in such a way that you would not like to have God say, "What are you doing?" ― J.C. Ryle

We can take it from the Lord himself, who is our justification objectively, and our justifier experientially, that legalism and undue sacramentalism are a blight upon the Gospel. -- Roger Salter

When an Anglican leader invokes "the great tradition" as their authority, look out! This is code for: "I have put aside sola Scriptura, and any definition of Anglicanism that is grounded in the recognized formularies of our church (the confessional documents we have believed and subscribed to for the entirety of our history!) -- Chuck Collins

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
June 25, 2024

THREE important conferences were held this month that will shape the future direction and destiny of the Anglican Communion. One is underway as I write.

The first convention, and the most serious, with long-term implications for the entire Anglican Communion took place outside Cairo, Egypt (June 11-15) with meetings between the primates of the Global South (GSFA) and orthodox Anglican leaders, in the hope of building bridges between Gafcon and the Global South.

The Global South leaders repeated their statement that the Archbishop of Canterbury and C of E had "forfeited" leadership and vowed to press on with creating new structures for the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Some 200 Global South Anglicans met in Cairo to hear the Archbishop of Sudan, Justin Badi Arama, state that membership of the Communion had shifted "from geography to doctrine".

He added: "Provinces who join the fellowship covenant with each other to stay faithful to the plain and canonical teaching of God's word and to be mutually accountable to each other in matters of faith and order."

UK representatives at the meeting including the former Bishop of Blackburn, Julian Henderson, Canon John Dunnett of the Church of England Evangelical Council and Richard Moy of SOMA. Archbishop Badi described them as the "holy remnant": "They are those who have resisted bowing to the demands of revisionism. They have committed themselves to proclaim and live out the authentic gospel truth."

A Communique from the First Assembly of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) revealed that 11 provinces have become "fully covenanted members of GSFA" through Synodical processes, together with three associate member dioceses and 14 mission partners.

The Assembly included 13 Primates, 44 Bishops, 46 clergy and 36 lay leaders. Bishop Anthony Poggo, General Secretary of the Anglican Communion Office attended the Assembly as an Observer.

The communique stated, "because of our commitment to the authority of holy Scripture in its plain and canonical teaching and with guidance from historical Church councils, GSFA has become a spiritual home for all orthodox Anglicans."

They stated that the Cairo covenant was a "new instrument" for the Anglican Communion "to bring true unity in diversity which honours the supreme authority of Scripture". Archbishop Badi said: "Though Canterbury says 'let us walk together, listen to each other and have a good disagreement', the GSFA Primates and I say to you that 'we cannot walk together in sin... (and that) unless there is repentance by those who have gone astray, we cannot have unity at the expense of God's life-giving truth.'"

The GSFA said that they would not "walk away" from the Anglican Communion. "Indeed," they declared, "the Church of England's departure from that standard has only served to strengthen our resolve to work together to reset the Communion."

The statement revealed that GSFA would collaborate with the GAFCON movement and other orthodox groupings in "practical steps to set up GSFA as a well structured home for orthodox Anglicans worldwide".

It was also an occasion to "re-set" the Anglican Communion by creating covenantal structures to which one must commit in order to be part of this fresh, faithful expression of Anglicanism. Put another way, while checks and balances exist within the structures of Anglicanism (in a congregation through the relationship between a rector and the vestry; in a diocese between a bishop and synod; and in a province between an archbishop/college of bishops and provincial synod). There has never been before that a church had the power to discipline an entire province that becomes heretical.

When the provinces of TEC in the USA and the Church of England began to openly celebrate sexual sin in direct contradiction to the Word of God, the worldwide Anglican Communion had no clear means to call these provinces back to orthodoxy. Many viewed that as a "reformation moment" in the history of the Anglican Communion.

More stories reflecting on this auspicious occasion including the final communique can be found here:

https://virtueonline.org/anglican-global-south-first-assembly-communique-issued
https://virtueonline.org/gsfa-not-running-away
https://virtueonline.org/cairo-eve-great-historic-reset
https://virtueonline.org/ninth-trumpet-communique-first-assembly-global-south-fellowship-anglican-churches
https://virtueonline.org/gsfa-new-wineskin-and-new-instrument
https://virtueonline.org/egypt-ceec-perspective-john-dunnett-national-director

***

The second was a conclave held June 20 - June 23 at St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA. to elect the next archbishop for the Anglican Church in North America, a growing body of Anglicans that broke away from The Episcopal Church over a range of theological issues that included the ordination of an avowed homosexual to the episcopacy.

The ACNA elected the Rt. Rev. Steve Wood, Bishop of the Diocese of the Carolinas and rector of St. Andrew's Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina as the third Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America at its recent conclave at St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, PA.

He follows in the footsteps of Bishop Robert Duncan and more recently Bishop Foley Beach the first and second archbishops of the ACNA.

What separates the three bishops is their views on the ordination of women to the priesthood. ACNA rejects women being ordained to the episcopacy.

Bishop Duncan affirmed the ordination of women priests when he was Bishop of Pittsburgh. Bishop Beach did not. Beach opposed the ordination of women, unlike his predecessor, but subscribed to the right of each diocese to its own decision on the matter. A majority of ACNA bishops do not ordain women.

Bishop Wood's position is more nuanced. The Anglican Diocese of the Carolinas Policy for Women in Order has supported the ordination of women as deacons and priests in the church, with the provision that women may not serve in the
office of rector.

You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/new-acna-archbishops-position-womens-ordination-could-have-repercussions-denomination

***

The third conference, now underway is the triennial gathering of the Episcopal Church's 81st General Convention which is meeting in Louisville, KY June 23 -- 28. While most of the hot (sexual) button issues have been resolved there are a number of issues that bewail delegates including the growing shortage of money, with calls to reduce diocesan pledges to the national church from 15% to 10%.

The 15% assessment on diocesan revenue is The Episcopal Church's largest source of funding in the churchwide budget, more than $30 million a year. Six dioceses asked General Convention to gradually reduce the rate to 10%. The church already has gradually lowered the assessment rate from 21% in 2010. It was shot down. Pay up or else.

If you thought that women running The Episcopal Church would be all sweetness and light; buttercups and roses, allow me to disillusion you. A real harbinger of the inner workings of TEC is a growing fight for who will lead the House of Deputies. Two women want the jobTaber-Hamilton accused incumbent Ayala Harris of bullying and of using her as a shield in conflicts with others.

"I am sharing with you today that, from the fall of 2022 onwards, I've been asked to rescue situations and people from the impact of our current President of the House of Deputies," Taber-Hamilton wrote in a blog post. "I was initially also expected by the President to protect her from those she perceived as threats to her."

Taber-Hamilton noted that she had been excluded from the planning process for the 81st General Convention, and that her concerns about equity issues in hiring the church center's interim chief operating officer and in proposing rules changes for the House of Deputies attracted Ayala Harris' ire.

"We do not have a President who is able to accept responsibility for her actions and role in organizational dysfunction through an ongoing pattern of obfuscation and misdirection, blaming and shaming others who have nothing to do with the accountability of her office. Over the past two years, the President has journeyed to this General Convention on a veritable corduroy road of people that she has thrown under the bus," Taber-Hamilton said.

OUCH. You can read more here: https://livingchurch.org/news/news-episcopal-church/taber-hamilton-accuses-ayala-harris-of-bullying/

BREAKING: President Julia Ayala Harris was re-elected June 25 at the 81st General Convention, winning decisively on the first ballot and fending off challenges from the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, the deputies’ vice president, and Zena Link, a former Executive Council member.

The Middle East war mostly representing the group of Palestinian Anglicans and Clergy Allies and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship's Palestine Israel Network called for peace in Israel-Palestine.

But The Episcopal Church House of Bishops rejected resolutions which would have 1. labeled Israel an apartheid state and 2) endorsed divestment efforts it. They pivoted and approved measures calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Bishops voted to condemn Christian Zionism, but were not ready to embrace all things Palestinian. The word "genocide" that was being thrown around earlier was removed from all resolutions. Bishops are somewhat divided on whether to label the atrocities of the current conflict a genocide. Really. The bishops also introduced two amendments, the first eliminated language about the "discriminatory nature" of the Israeli government's policies and practices, and the other condemning the political and theological ideology of Christian Zionism.

Archbishop of Jerusalem Hosam Naoum was not getting it all his own way. One question posed via a moderator to the archbishop was about divisions within the church concerning the war in Gaza and other related matters. In answer to the question, Naoum turned to the topic of General Convention resolutions.

Dodge and weave. Clearly not all Episcopalians are ready to kick Israel in the gonads over the war with Hamas. One thing the archbishop made clear was that he wants a two-state solution, but that pretty well fell on deaf ears.

***

The House of Bishops approved the next step toward full communion between The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church by adopting Resolution A049.

The Episcopal Church currently is in full communion with seven churches: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada; the Moravian Church-Northern and Southern Provinces; the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, India; the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht; the Philippine Independent Church; and the Church of Sweden.

As these denominations shrink, the need to stay afloat becomes more urgent. Sooner rather than later they will be small life rafts on the ocean waiting for the final wave to wash over them.

In a sign of growing numerical weakness is that Episcopal Church in Micronesia, a mission within Province VIII of the Episcopal Church with four congregations, three on Guam and one on Saipan is being added to the Diocese of Hawaii.

Perhaps it is beginning to dawn on revisionist bishops that a church bent on pushing liberal and woke causes is not a winning streak to make churches grow.

One bishop at the convention seemed to get it. The Rt. Rev. Michael Hunn of the Rio Grande critiqued a church culture of fruitless meetings and wasteful spending, the disconnect between national church initiatives and the experience of local churches, and the failure to measure the effectiveness of its programs in a sweeping critique during a House of Bishops' legislative session.

Hunn, who serves as vice chair of the Governance & Structure Committee, dismissed the proposed ministry review as a "waste of time and waste of money," saying it wouldn't achieve the kind of churchwide cultural change the Episcopal Church needs.

"I don't think good leaders stop every two years to ask if they're being effective," Hunn said of the resolution. "These days, business doesn't stop to assess its leaders' effectiveness every two years. It's about 90-day goals and clarity of purpose, about constant and consistent gathering of feedback, making course corrections to stay on track."

Targets of his six-minute speech ranged from the culture of rivalry between the House of Deputies and House of Bishops to the Executive Council's penchant for acting like a "parish vestry." At one point, he compared a churchwide lack of resource-sharing to the reality TV show Survivor.

"We need to stop paying for meetings that don't change the world or even our church. We need to stop funding grants that don't move the needle," Hunn said. "We need to stop creating desks at 815 2nd Avenue [the Episcopal Church Center in New York], which then compete with each other for money every three years.

We need to stop measuring our importance by how much money our pet project gets in the budget and start measuring what we're actually doing to grow the church."

What more needs to be said. SS TEC is on its way to the bottom of the ocean. It is only a matter of time.

There you have it. The money pool is slowly drying up. Aging Episcopalians heading to columbaria are no longer dropping checks in the plate and younger generations, what few there are, have mortgages to pay, mouths to feed, and future educational costs to consider. Pledging is dying. The bloom is off the Episcopal rose. To go along with the losses there are fewer full-time clergy. Property sell offs do provide an immediate source of income for bishops but even that pool is limited. Not all church properties sell fast. Inner city cathedrals with air space for sale do much better.

***

The Church of England must ask what price is too high to keep conservatives in the Church of England?

Future historians of the Church of England might look back at this weekend as the beginning of the end, writes Thoe Hobson. A selection of bishops and members of the General Synod are meeting at a hotel in Leicester to seek a solution to the impasse over homosexuality. They hope to make a plan to take to July's Synod: a deal that keeps conservatives in the Church. That's got to be a good thing, hasn't it? It depends.

The story so far is that the Church decided in favour of same-sex blessings last year, and also in favour of new 'pastoral guidance' that is expected to allow gay clergy to marry, therefore officially condoning them for the first time.

Conservatives, the large majority of whom are evangelicals, see this as false teaching, and are demanding their own structures. They don't just want the right to dissent, parish by parish. That would mean being a tolerated minority, at odds with the official Church. They want their dissenting network to constitute a second version of the Church of England, which is seen as no less authentically 'the C of E'.

Well obviously the majority will tell them to get lost, you might think. For why should an institution agree to such bifurcation? You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/what-price-too-high-keep-conservatives-church-england

Other stories include: https://virtueonline.org/why-c-e-cries-out-direct-democracy

https://virtueonline.org/church-england-attendance-remains-below-pre-pandemic-levels-despite-slight-rise-2023

***

If you want to know the trajectory of the LGBTQI circle dance of dispossession, then consider this. From Lord Alfred Douglas's poem "Two Loves" in which he wrote, 'the love that dare not speak its name,' to the present-day situation as it is found in the Presbyterian Church (USA). In Salt Lake City the 226th General Assembly will take up legislation barring ordination of candidates who are not LBBTQ-affirming.

This is reminiscent of The Episcopal Church's passage of Resolution B012 mandating homosexual marriage. When you refuse to go along you get the Bishop Bill Love of Albany treatment and shown the door.

And you wonder why these mainline churches are dying. God is not mocked. These churches will all be gone in a decade or so, victims of their own bad theology and morality.

***

The Diocese for the Sake of Others (DS4O) an ACNA diocese has had something of a checkered relationship with the leadership of the ACNA. Recently a picture was circulated which showed up on X (formerly Twitter) causing something of a stir. A person from Jars of Clay, a Christian band also revealed an Anglican priest, a Fr. Heath McClure, with a T shirt that read, "A Pastor With Pride". He is the rector of a parish with the unlikely name of Luminous Church in the diocese of C4SO. Heath is associated with something called St. Francis Mission, which is a fully LGBTQ-affirming gathering.

A VOL reader got in touch with VOL to say that Heath McClure is not a member of ACNA; and, secondly, Luminous Church has been confronted about all this by its bishop, Todd Hunter and is apparently the parish is on its way out of the ACNA.

***

World renown theologian Jürgen Moltmann died this week aged 98. Moltmann (8 April 1926 -- 3 June 2024) was a German Reformed theologian who was a professor of systematic theology at the University of Tübingen and was known for his books such as the Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, God in Creation and other contributions to systematic theology. His works were translated into many languages.

Moltmann described his theology as an extension of Karl Barth's theological works, especially the Church Dogmatics, and he described his work as Post-Barthian. He developed a form of liberation theology predicated on the view that God suffers with humanity, while also promising humanity a better future through the hope of the Resurrection, which he labelled a 'theology of hope'. Much of Moltmann's work was to develop the implications of these ideas for various areas of theology. Moltmann became known for developing a form of social trinitarianism. He was awarded several international honorary doctorates.

A well-known North Texas pastor Dr. Tony Evans has stepped down from ministry "due to sin." Evans is one of the founding pastors of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church in Dallas and a former chaplain for both the Dallas Cowboys and the Mavericks.

Mega-church pastor Robert Morris resigned from Gateway Church over furor following allegations he molested a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s. Prominent Christian author and retired pastor Rick Warren didn't mince his words in his condemnation of the reports about Morris. Warren posted to X saying, "I'm angry & disgusted to hear of Robert Morris' sexual abuse of a child & heartbroken for Cindy Clemishire. To sexually use a 12-yr old child, then continue it for years, is not merely an 'inappropriate relationship.' It's a crime. Sexual child abuse is an evil punishable by law. One can't just confess when caught & move on with no consequences."

***

PAKISTAN sadness. From Bishop Azad Marshall comes this tearful appraisal of a Christian falsely accused of burning a Koran being killed by a community of Muslims.

"Today every single Pakistani should be weighed by grief, not only for the atrocities in a foreign land but right here. Yet again, hate has brought us to the place where we must ask questions. The question is not 'Where will this stop?' because beyond the devastation of homes and lives, beyond the brutal killing of a hard working man, beyond the devastation of a community and the grief of a family, we have already come too far! The question is when will those who make change and those who pursue justice, seek truth and cry for a more just and fair world, when will those lives rise up for the sake of Pakistan's own. Us, Pakistan's Christians, are Pakistan's own, the circumstances are pitched even now against millions of Pakistan's own. What hope can we honestly speak for as Pakistan's Own? Being a minority justifies a mob being whipped up and lives being devastated and people being killed? Who whips up these mobs? Who pursues the many crimes that exist in one incident and who promises us that this will never happen again? No one! But today let us look to God for Justice, let us trust in His intervention and His divine hope. Do something, Say Something. May the Lord have mercy on our land."

**

We are living through an intense culture war. The aim of one side is to overwhelm our Christian civilization, upon which so much of our human flourishing depends. The determination of the other is to defend it. The chosen battlefield by the progressives has become sex, and particularly the sexualization of our children, writes Gavin Ashenden.

The strategy behind this slow, careful strategy to corrupt our children is usually to appeal to our pity and compassion for people supposedly marginalized by their erotic preferences.

This worked very well for a while. But as all observers of ideological movements from the Left will know, the process begins with a plea for inclusion, and then turns rapidly into an exercise of power, enforcing compulsion.

Which is where we are now with LGBTQ+ 'rights'. Those who don't subscribe to them currently face a serious range of sanctions from social excommunication to unemployment and de-banking. Who is being bullied now? But perhaps the tide is turning. You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/tide-turning-transgender-madness-last

CULTURE WARS

From Fringe Heresy to Dominant Orthodoxy: How the Homosexuality Cult Hijacked Am... https://virtueonline.org/fringe-heresy-dominant-orthodoxy-how-homosexuality-cult-hijacked-america

Hope for Struggling Christians During Pride Month https://virtueonline.org/hope-struggling-christians-during-pride-month

How Americans Said I Do to Gay "Marriage https://virtueonline.org/how-americans-said-i-do-gay-marriage

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I have done a YouTube interview with Dr. Gerry McDermott on the War in Israel. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/98nNyRRWIz4?si=HEnsrJHU1eRYNjC2
I have also started a SUBSTACK with my scribblings on the Middle East with the war in Israel. You can see them here: https://substack.com/@davidvirtue2?utm_source=user-menu

***

Please accept my apologies for this delayed VIEWPOINTS. I have been struggling with Afib, Lyme Disease and rheumatoid arthritis which made writing difficult. Fingers, knuckles and wrists are particularly affected. During this time, my webmaster passed away from ALS leaving a young family. It has not been a good past few weeks.

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David