Pride is more than the first of the seven deadly sins; it is itself the essence of all sin. --- John R.W. Stott

The percentage of Americans who claim no religious affiliation nearly doubled from 2007 (16%) to 2022 (31%), becoming a force in American culture and one of the largest segments of the religious landscape, according to Pew Research. -- Bob Smietana

"Our culture is producing adult-sized boys and infantile men. Absent real challenge or adventure and without an established masculine community handing down the rites and responsibilities of maturity, boys are often bereft." -- Fr. Jay Thomas

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
May 24, 2024

I had the privilege this past week of interviewing the new president of the Ambridge, PA based Trinity School for Ministry, Dr. Bryan C. Hollon. I found him engaging, honest and frank. He did not play the usual political games that often comes with the job. He did not dodge a single question and, while giving a very upbeat view of his own seminary, he was quick to acknowledge that most seminaries around the country, especially in The Episcopal Church are in real trouble with declining enrollment and churches that could not afford a full-time pastor or priest.

He did offer the view that Anglicanism offers an excellent way to be a Mere Christian. He also opined that no other seminary in the U.S. introduces students to the full scope of biblically faithful, orthodox Anglicanism the way that Trinity does.

He admitted that when he arrived at Trinity two years ago, "we were just coming out of the COVID years. The residential student body was reduced significantly during the pandemic, but our online enrollment had risen. Currently, we have around 250 students studying at Trinity in some capacity with just under 100 considered "full-time," according to the criteria recommended by our accrediting agency, the Association of Theological Schools.

"During the last two years, our enrollment has been trending upwards, and in our current, spring recruiting season, applications are up 92% compared to the same period last year. Many of these applications are for full-time, residential MDiv students, so we are very encouraged."

Challenged on the seminary and societal changes Hollon did not back away. "We've just completed a thorough curriculum revision, and we are working hard to serve the church as effectively as possible. A greater emphasis on cultural apologetics along with better training for evangelism and missions are central to our current strategic plan. At Trinity, we have two endowed Institutes: The Robert Webber Center, and the Stanway Institute."

You can read my full interview with him here: https://virtueonline.org/anglicanism-offers-excellent-way-be-mere-christian-dr-bryan-c-hollon

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TEC POWER STRUGGLE. As the SS TEC slowly sinks into the sunset a power struggle is underway for three positions -- the replacement of Michael Curry as Presiding Bishop who, if you read the requirements for the job, one would almost have to be Jesus who not only walked on water but had the miracle of rescuing the church from inevitably sinking at this late date.

A second slot is for president of the House of Deputies, a position currently held by Julia Ayala Harris, who is concluding her first term in office. She has drawn two challengers so far: the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, a priest in the Diocese of Olympia who is the deputies' sitting vice president, and Zena Link, a lay deputy from the Diocese of Western Massachusetts who previously served seven years on the church's Executive Council, according to ENS.

The other slot is for vice president of the House of Deputies. Three candidates have declared their hand for this position. These include the Rev. Ruth Meyers, a Church Divinity School of the Pacific professor, and a six-time deputy from the Diocese of California. She joins the Rev. Steve Pankey of the Diocese of Kentucky and the Rev. Charles Graves IV of the Diocese of Texas, who declared their candidacies earlier this month.

According to an ENS report, an incumbent House of Deputies president or vice president has faced a challenger only three times since 1970. Taber-Hamilton has said she does not intend to run for vice president if she loses the presidential race, ensuring at least one new leader will be elected in the House of Deputies.

The deeper question is; does any of this really matter? Will any one of the winners from the PB on down change the church's direction or reverse TEC's decline in any appreciable way? Keeping the machinery wheels going and working out which resolutions are worth pursuing and how much money can or should be spent in pursuit of goals that have more to do with the government or the UN than the Gospel, all seems rather pointless. Harping on about racism, climate change, gender dysphoria, abortion, IVF, immigration, diversity, inclusion, and equality will never fill pews. Bleating on about the joys of homosexual marriage has doing nothing for the choir loft. The 81st General Convention will convene scheduled for June 23-28 in Louisville, Kentucky. Don't look for the church to change direction.

Not surprisingly the Episcopal Church's bias in favor of Palestine reveals an anti-Israel hatred, which will manifest itself when General Convention delegates gather in Kentucky in June. They will discuss ten resolutions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eight directly support the non-existent state of Palestine; one recognizes the Hamas slaughter of Jews and one "would reject the theology of Christian Zionism that sees a Jewish-led nation of Israel as a prerequisite for Jesus' second coming."

Most of the resolutions would hamper Israel's ability to fight Hamas by demanding that the US stop the flow of arms to Israel until it agrees to stop the war. You can read my analysis here: https://virtueonline.org/episcopal-church-bias-favor-palestine-reveals-anti-israel-hatred

The dioceses of Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan are one step away from merging as the combined Diocese of the Great Lakes after committees voted May 23 to recommend approval of the plan when the 81st General Convention convenes next month in Louisville, Kentucky, according to an ENS report.

TEC SCANDALS PERSISTAnglican Watch reports that an open letter prepared by a member of the Diocese of Easton regarding the Bishop Santosh Marray Title IV clergy disciplinary complaints has been revealed. Anglican Watch unequivocally supports the complainants in this matter and calls on the national church to act with integrity in this matter. They call on Marray to repent of his blasphemous claims to speak on behalf of the Holy Spirit and his evil conduct towards those who disagree with him. You can read more here: https://www.anglicanwatch.com/title-iv-complainants-in-bishop-murray-case-publish-open-letter-to-diocese-and-episcopal-church/?amp=1

Sean Mullen was reportedly fired as rector of St. Mark's Philadelphia, possibly for issues with children. Anglican Watch was told that the underlying reason may have involved children. You can read more here: https://www.anglicanwatch.com/sean-mullen-reportedly-fired-as-rector-of-st-marks-philadelphia-possibly-for-issues-with-children/?amp=1

And just when you think things could not get crazier, read this; An Episcopal priest may lose his credentials in the denomination after observing a "Eucharistic fast" in the name of racial justice. A panel charged with overseeing the case in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia concluded on May 8 that Cayce Ramey violated his ordination vows and should be "deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority of God's word and sacraments conferred at ordinations to Priesthood and Diaconate," according to a news release.

And then came this. Same-sex Episcopal priests turn to surrogacy for child Mary Ann Mueller writes that Fr. Morris and Fr. Voets became Daddy Kevin and Daddy Keith this week.

The Episcopal priests are: the V. Rev. Kevin Morris, rector of Church of the Ascension in Rockville Center, New York, and the Rev. Keith Voets, at St. Alban the Martyr Episcopal Church Queens New York. Their surrogate son, little Robert David, was born in June 2022.

The secular media has sniffed out the story -- another embarrassment for the Episcopal Church.

Not The Bee ran the news: Gay Episcopal priests pay for surrogate baby boy, say the phrase "protect children from priests" is "harmful" ...

As did Apex News: Two gay Episcopal priests welcomes a baby boy via surrogacy ...

But this -- gay parenting -- is copacetic for the Episcopal Church. Through the years General Convention has worked itself up to accepting and accommodating sexual deviancy. The practice of using surrogacy to produce a child is no different. The LGBTQ revolution -- with its subset of moral deviations -- is in full flower within the Episcopal Church. In 2022 Resolution D049 -- Support of Public Policies for Adequate Surrogacy Protection became law in TEC. You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/same-sex-episcopal-priests-turn-surrogacy-child

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ACNA Bishop Todd Atkinson has been deposed from ministry. The former bishop of the Via Apostolica Missionary District, has been removed from ordained ministry following the conclusion of his ecclesiastical trial. On April 3, 2024, it was announced that Atkinson was found guilty upon clear and convincing evidence by the Anglican Church in North America's Court for the Trial of a Bishop on four charges of "conduct giving just cause for scandal or offense, including the abuse of ecclesiastical power" (Canon IV.2.4): You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/acna-bishop-atkinson-deposed-ministry

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A new Anglican Diocese has formed in England continuing the "Anglican realignment" theme that is growing across the Anglican Communion. The global realignment has resulted in two new Provinces - the Anglican Church in Brazil (Igreja Anglicana no Brasil) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). These are not without significance. The former is seemingly the largest Anglican jurisdiction in that country and the same is true of the Canadian part of the ACNA.

More recently Gafcon has recognised other smaller structures: the Church of Confessing Anglicans Aotearoa New Zealand (CCAANZ), the Diocese of the Southern Cross in Australia and the Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE).

This week the creation of a third diocese was announced - the Diocese of the Anglican Missionary Congregations (AMC). AMC has grown from a single Nigerian diaspora congregation in Manchester to thirty-five congregations in the UK and in some parts of Europe. They are served by 52 self-supporting ordained clergy. You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/new-diocese-england

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Next month the College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America will meet at St. Vincents College in Latrobe, PA to hold a Conclave to elect the next Archbishop of the ACNA. Many in the ACNA feel that the election of the next Archbishop will determine the future of the entire church.

It will be an auspicious occasion as Archbishop Foley beach will be stepping down after two terms and his replacement elected. The Venerable Canon Justin Murff, Executive Director, Anglican Office for Government & International Affairs and Canon to the Archbishop for Middle East and North African Affair wrote a piece: THE ACNA: WITHER BOUND? for VOL.

He writes: "Make no mistake, there are several elephants in the room that whoever the bishops elect, the next archbishop will require a unique set of skills and enduring fortitude to meet the challenges head on if the ACNA is to survive and meaningfully join the emerging re-formed global Anglican community."

"The current Archbishop, The Most Rev. Dr. Foley Beach has fought to grow the church in North America through the promotion of evangelism and discipleship across the more than 1200 parishes in the ACNA. Archbishop Beach has also strived to protect and defend the ACNA from hostile encroachments by external Anglican Provinces who continually seek to ignore the role of the ACNA in the Western Hemisphere and by internal "Anglican" movements and organizations that only seek to weaken and hurt the ACNA and often led by disgraced or defrocked former priests." You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/acna-wither-bound

With the upcoming ACNA meeting of bishops in June and published calls to no longer ignore the elephant in the living room involving Women's Ordination (WO), Dr. Bruce Atkinson weighs in on the issue and offers a concise yet thorough summary of the issue... and his own proposed solution. He has studied the issue for decades and valued the 2003 AMiA report led by the late great Bishop John H. Rodgers, Jr. -- A Report of the Study Concerning the Ordination of Women Undertaken by the Anglican Mission in America (PDF), as well as Bishop Rodgers' own efforts to resolve this issue (e.g., https://virtueonline.org/serious-argument-against-ordination-women-priesthood-episcopat)

"I propose here a scripture-based and rational argument that ACNA leaders can provide regarding changing the current situation. In ACNA, some of the leaders have unfortunately called their unresolved stance "dual integrities"-- which has been rightly criticized as an oxymoron. Through the prophet Amos, God underlined this point with logic: "Can two even walk together if they do not agree on the direction"? And we all know that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." You can read his piece here: https://virtueonline.org/womens-ordination-and-anglican-church-north-america-acna

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WELBY AND THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION. Archbishop Justin Welby would have been no match against the late John Stott in debate over hot button issues even though the Archbishop of Canterbury, still owns the Church of England and still holds sway over the majority of the communion's primates, he does not have the allegiance of his orthodox wing -- GAFCON and the GSFA and 70% of all practicing Anglicans.

This week he was awarded an honorary doctorate and a knighthood for services rendered, though many believe his services have been less than sterling and in fact his tenure as archbishop has been a wrecking ball of bad theology and decisions that have gone against the majority of global Anglicans. He has been called on to resign several times.

He has capitulated to the pansexualists, openly embraced women bishops, none of whom show the slightest interest in the gospel, pandered to all manner of woke issues and has, most egregiously alienated his catholic and evangelical wings of the church. You can read more of my analysis here: https://virtueonline.org/welby-and-anglican-communion

The Daily Mail Online on X excoriated "The Archbishop of Airmiles: Justin Welby accusing him of hypocrisy after racking up 48,000 miles on foreign trips to Africa, Gaza and Pakistan since September despite lecturing people about climate change...while seemingly ignoring problems at home."

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On Saturday 10th May 2024, the Church in Wales consecrated their youngest ever bishop. According to his biography, the now-Rt Rev. David Morris is just 38 years old, has a cat called Gordon, and in his spare time enjoys enjoys gardening, travelling and keeping fit. He also enjoys spending time with his fiance, Mr. Marc Penny.

He is not the first bishop in the Church in Wales to be in a same-sex relationship; the Rt Rev. Cherry Vann, the Bishop of Monmouth, has been in a same-sex civil partnership since 2015. David Morris is, however, the first to describe his same-sex partner as his fiance, which would suggest they have plans to marry.

What is most troubling was the appearance of a church of England bishop at the consecration. The Rt. Rev. Jill Duff, Bishop of Lancaster (in the Church of England was one of the bishops' laying hands on David Morris. She was there as a representative of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, which makes this a very significant event. Is this the start of an Episcopal free for all asks an Anglican Futures writer? You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/start-episcopal-free-all

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Church of England attendance saw a slight rise in attendance figures in 2023, but it remains below pre-pandemic levels. According to a report in Christian Today, the Church of England has failed to return to pre-pandemic levels of attendance, the latest figures show.

Average weekly attendance at services rose by nearly 5% to 685,000 in 2023, new data released by the denomination reveals.

It marks a third year of consecutive growth for the Church of England but figures still remain far below the 845,000 -- or around 1.45% of the population -- who were attending in 2019 before the pandemic struck. You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/church-england-attendance-remains-below-pre-pandemic-levels-despite-slight-rise-2023

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What price is too high to keep conservatives in the Church of England?Theo Hobson writing for the SPECTATOR says that future historians of the Church of England might look back at this weekend as the beginning of the end. 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. You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/what-price-too-high-keep-conservatives-church-england

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WHY THE CoFE CRIES OUT FOR DIRECT DEMOCRACY. Andrew Cadman writing in the Conservative Woman says that it isn't just in politics that more Direct Democracy is needed. "Anyone who has not been living on Mars for the past few years will know that Wokery has overtaken almost all our institutions. One such is of course the Church of England, which has all but given up on Christianity in its upper echelons. Many will say that in our irreligious age this does not matter, but they are very wrong. The current malign ideologies that are destroying the West moved into the gap that Christianity has vacated, particularly amongst the elites which adopted these new 'High Status Faiths'."

All is not lost, he writes. "Christianity is undergoing an intellectual and moral revival, with a series of high-profile conversions from atheism and agnosticism. Astonishingly, scientific objections to faith are being seriously rethought. Those who yearn to see the end of the malignant ideologies which oppress us often fail to understand that like it or not society must have a faith of some kind, and it seems Christianity, for whatever faults you may think it has, is clearly the one that underpinned Western values and seems the best to preserve and reinvigorate those values going forward." You can read his analysis here: https://virtueonline.org/why-c-e-cries-out-direct-democracy

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Is the tide turning on transgender madness at last? Writing in Christian Today, Lynda Rose writes; "'You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time.' So allegedly said Abraham Lincoln, though exactly when and where has never been verified, but whether correctly attributed or not, the opinion is undoubtedly true. And nowhere has this been more strikingly illustrated than in the row over gender identity.

For the last few years, we have had the message hammered home that trans women are women, and must be treated as such. Irrespective of how they look -- and there have been some supposedly 'trans women' still sporting beards -- they have an absolute right, the argument runs, to be treated as women. From which it follows that they can use female-only spaces, compete as females in sports events, and receive health care appropriate to their 'self-identified' sex.

"Predictably, there have been problems. There have been reports, for example, of transgender prisoners transferred to female prisons raping fellow inmates and prison officers. While the NHS had provoked ire by instructing medical staff to stop using terms such as breastfeeding and vaginal birth for mothers-to-be, in favour of 'chestfeeding' and frontal birth. But despite the many and vociferous objections, battle-hardened campaigners for gender ideology have fought on regardless, not just laying claim for trans-women to use female-only spaces, but encouraging everyone, and especially children, to consider whether they too may not have been born in the wrong body. 'Gender is choice, not biology' has become the chosen mantra of the day. You can be whatever you want!" You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/tide-turning-transgender-madness-last

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George Barna, a leading expert in church and worldview trends, has weighed in on some of the biggest issues facing the Church -- including the steady decrease in a biblical worldview and dwindling concern for spiritual formation -- at a time of "Christian invisibility in our culture."

In an interview with The Christian Post, the 69-year-old founder of The Barna Group, a market research firm specializing in studying Americans' religious beliefs and behaviors that he sold in 2009, said that over the last few decades, he's seen certain negative trends increasingly permeate Western Christianity.

"People have become more selfish, churches have become less influential, pastors have become less Bible-centric," Barna, who now serves as the director of research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, said.

You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/george-barna-identifies-biggest-threats-facing-church-weve-reached-time-christian-invisibility

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Well, what does it mean to be truly Anglican? Reform theologian Chuck Collins writes in a piece he calls, The Great Betrayal! that so many of our Anglican bishops and leaders do not have confidence in Holy Scripture as it is understood, interpreted, and upheld by the Thirty-nine Articles and 1662 Book of Common Prayer (and the two books of Homilies), so they revert to an amorphous concept they call the "Great Tradition." By this they mean a variety of things - the first millennium teachings of the church and councils - the Vincentian Canon (Christian teaching believed everywhere, always, and by all) - really whatever they want it to mean!

There's nothing "Anglican" about this. Nothing! And it betrays everything Cranmer and the English reformers fought for. It betrays the sure foundation of God's inspired Word (sola Scriptura) what Alister McGrath calls "Christianity's Dangerous Idea." It categorically abandons the recognized formularies that have historically defined what it means to be Anglican. OUCH. You can read more here: https://virtueonline.org/great-betrayal-0

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Truth and tradition: Mouneer Hanna Anis is the highly respected former Egyptian archbishop based in Cairo. Richard Gauvain Department of Political Science, British University in Egypt, Cairo, has written a piece on Bishop Anis's role in the GSFA. An abstract can be seen here with a link to the full article.

ABSTRACT. This article explores Bishop Mouneer Hanna Anis' role in the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA). Noting how Anis draws legitimacy from his position as the first Anglican Archbishop of the newly created Province of Alexandria, it examines his highlighting of the importance of North Africa, especially Egypt, in addressing contemporary challenges within the Global South. The article reflects on the innovative nature of Anis' strategies in constructing a new narrative of Egyptian Anglican Orthodoxy. It describes Anis' use of Thomas Oden's historical analysis of the importance of early African contexts on the shaping of mature Christian tradition. And it notes the emphasis Anis places on Athanasius of Alexandria in constructing his narrative. By introducing several of Anis' recent publications, the article also draws attention to key discussions (and disagreements) on the nature of the relationship between scripture and tradition within contemporary Global South settings. To Read More Click Here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1474225X.2024.2335124

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