Author Archives: David

Charlie Kirk and the silence of the Anglicans

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When George Floyd was killed, in no time at all, Anglican bishops began parading their lamentations online.

Here is Linda Nicholls, who was at the time, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, expressing her dismay at “another black man killed by police brutality”. Fair enough: the death of George Floyd was brutal, he was black, and it was caused by a white policeman. The policeman who caused the death was convicted of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. But he was not convicted of premeditated murder.

There was no shortage of other bishops eager to air their righteous indignation for all to admire. It wasn’t confined to ACoC and TEC bishops: not wishing to be left behind, here is a collection of ACNA bishops mourning and lamenting in unison.

It is now five days since the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk, a conservative Christian who has been effectively defending orthodox Christian values to young people on US college campuses since he was 18. Unsurprisingly, this has rubbed some people up the wrong way, leading not only to his assassination but to celebrations of his assassination.

You might think that the bishops condemning George Floyd’s death would leap at this opportunity to once again write letters of mourning and condemnation at this dreadful murder.

But they haven’t. Shame on the lot of them.

The one exception I did find was from Bishop Phil Ashey, who at least had the decency to ask for prayers for the family.

Here is a disgusting Facebook post by ACNA’s Rev. Harry K Zeiders (recently removed, along with the foot from his mouth), implying that Charlie Kirk deserved what he got because of his support for the Second Amendment.

Ironically, Bernie Sanders – whose views don’t quite align with those of Charlie Kirk – posted one of the better comments on this:

The curious case of the Archbishop who doesn’t need to get married in church

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I used to live in Machen, a small Welsh village about 12km away from where the new Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev. Cherry Vann, is to be consecrated in Newport Cathedral. Much as I would enjoy visiting my old home, I won’t be using that as an excuse to attend Ms. Van’s installation as Archbishop.

Vann is collecting a catalogue of firsts to add to her résumé: she was the first female priest to be ordained in the UK, and now she is the first lesbian primate to be in a homoerotic relationship with her partner for the last 30 years.

What is curious about that, you may be wondering. After all, the only thing that the Anglican church can do that excites any interest in the secular press is to have yet another scandal exposed or to appoint a new archbishop with unusual sexual tastes. I’ve come to suspect that it’s all part of a devious Anglican strategy to be noticed.

The curious thing about it is that, while every liberal Western province is clamouring to enshrine same-sex marriage into their liturgies, this Archbishop says she doesn’t need to be married in church.

If an Archbishop doesn’t need to be married in church, why does anyone else?

Problem solved: there will be no same-sex marriages in churches because it isn’t needed.

From here:

The archbishop grew up in a religious family in Whetstone in Leicestershire, following in her church organist father’s footsteps by studying at the Royal College of Music and then the Royal Schools of Music, where she trained as a teacher.

She entered an Anglican theological college in 1986 to prepare for ordination and then worked in the Manchester diocese, becoming a priest in 1994 and archdeacon of Rochdale in 2008.

Gender and sexuality are still highly divisive issues in the Anglican communion. Even in her new role as the first female and first openly gay archbishop in the UK, Vann was cautious on the topic of gay marriage.

“I don’t personally feel the need to get married in church; Wendy and I have been together for 30 years, we’ve made our vows, and we are committed to each other.

ACNA continues burrowing down the woke rabbit hole

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From here


ACNA’s New Vice-Chancellor for Safeguarding

In the midst of a difficult week for the Anglican Church in North America, there is a happy announcement: we have a Vice-Chancellor for Safeguarding, Jeannie Rose Barksdale! She has quite the resume, including a Stanford degree in Political Science and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Now in case any reader thinks Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity is grievance studies, you need to repent of noticing. Noticing is Whiteness.

Since then she has been busy, including being an active member of Church of the Advent, Washington, D. C., in the Diocese of Christ Our Hope. But she has found time to write. So let’s meet Jeannie Rose Barksdale in her own words.

Back in February, she found time to write for that erudite and balanced Christian publication, Sojourners. In it she is sad about a repeat shoplifter getting caught at Target. The shoplifter needed more love. She is also “feeling powerless and overwhelmed.” Why?

Lately, it has been far easier to despair than to love concretely. The Trump administration’s strategy of flooding the zone has made me feel powerless and overwhelmed — which is, as Adam Russell Taylor recently described it, precisely the point. Even while wrestling with lament, I’ve wanted to move toward contributing to addressing injustice to counter the pervasive injustice that occupies so much of our news. But I’ve just not known how.

Yes, the first days of President Trump II were so awful, it was difficult to love, to even know how to love. Oh, the “wrestling with lament”!

You may have guessed that I don’t much like Donald Trump. I think he is a bombastic, egotistical oaf. Having said that, I have to admit that what he has done has not been all bad: I tend to think of his positive achievements as happy accidents. Since they have all been bludgeoned into existence by executive order, they will all be undone in four years or so when an extreme leftist gets into power and uses the same technique. And I do not doubt that in four years the anti-Trump pendulum will swing with vengeance to the left.

Still, all this is temporal vanity that has little bearing on the eternal matters that should preoccupy the church.

So, if Ms Barksdale is in that much mental distress over wordly events that are largly beneficial – even though enacted by a buffoon –  and ACNA has hired her, both she and ACNA are in serious trouble.

Priests in bikinis

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Actually, only one lady priest from the Diocese of Toronto.

Rev. Gerlyn Henry was walking to her car carrying her new bikini in a transparent bag when she was intercepted by a passerby who accused her of immodesty.

Rev. Gerlyn Henry enjoys making TikTok videos, and the one she made recounting this was viewed so many times that it made an appearance in People Magazine.

If only the ACoC could find a way of making the Gospel (the real one, not the one it normally peddles) as popular. Bikinis are probably not the answer.

You can watch the video here.

If that has whetted your appetite for more, the Rev can be found prancing around in a rainbow stole to celebrate “Pride” here, a sartorial choice I find more disturbing than a bikini.

Rumblings of chaos in ACNA

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Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch III has been charged with the mishandling of sexual abuse disclosures and was being tried in an ecclesiastical court which was not open to the public.

The trial collapsed when the prosecutor, Alan Runyan, resigned because:

“the trial process had been irreparably tainted” by a member of the ACNA’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop who improperly questioned one of the prosecution’s witnesses for over an hour on the fifth day of trial.

The questioning allegedly brought in external material that had not been admitted into evidence by the court before the trial. This material, which pertained to the ACNA’s previous investigation rather than to the charges against Ruch, had been explicitly ruled improper by the court in an April 2025 pretrial order.

Archbishop Steve Wood appointed a new prosecutor so the trial could continue.

Meanwhile, Rachel Thebeau, the deputy prosecutor released a letter calling into question the integrity or competence – possibly both – of ACNA’s leadership. This was a career limiting move that led to her being persuaded to resign.

Archbishop Steve Wood has issued his own letter in response, a spectacle of duelling letters, defending himself and the other ACNA leaders tangled up in this:

The past few days have presented great challenges for our Anglican Church. As you may be aware, on Friday, a now-former employee of the province who was assisting in the prosecution for the ecclesiastical trial that is currently before the Court for the Trial of a Bishop, widely circulated a letter to individual members and clergy across the province that levels serious but misguided allegations against me, the provincial Chancellor, the Executive Director of the Province, and the Court. The letter suggests that we acted unethically and compromised the integrity of the Church. These accusations have sent a wave of pain, confusion, and division rippling across our province.

This makes me cringe, since the focus seems to be less on the truth or otherwise of Thebeau’s accusations and more on the aggravation it is causing ACNA leaders.

The College of Bishops has been pressed into service with yet another letter to help circle the ecclesiastical wagons. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it reads rather like a Trump cabinet meeting where toadying is the order of the day. The standout sentence is this piece of Newspeak: ” We are grateful for their ongoing commitment to appropriate levels of transparency”

Where is the truth in all this? I don’t know. What I do know is that the whole process is exceedingly murky and that makes me very suspicious.

There are some more opinions in the latest Anglican Unscripted:

 

The Sean Feucht fuss

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Sean Feucht is an American musician and pastor who has been refused permits to perform in a number of Canadian cities because his performance “goes against the values of inclusion, solidarity and respect.”

He opposes abortion, is less than enthusiastic about 2SLGBTQ+ demands and he is not reluctant to prance around in the political minefield of MAGA. He supports Donald Trump, the embodiment of everything that is shallow, vulgar, crass, and egomaniacal in the American psyche, which is, in my view, a failure in discernment, taste or both.

Feucht has been accused of ethical and financial misconduct by other faith leaders, although, until proved otherwise, the accusations might well be bogus.

It’s easy to have sympathy for Sean Feucht and what he claims to stand for and I am quite sure that he should be allowed a platform in Canada. If he really is as off the wall as his detractors would have us believe, then I’m confident we have the resilience to withstand his onslaught on our religion of diversity and inclusion.

Nevertheless, I question the wisdom of tying politics and Christianity together so tightly, whether it be from the left or the right. I suspect that many Christians who do so would be unable to resist Satan’s third temptation to Jesus in the wilderness.

To end on a lighter note, here is a video of a daft policewoman telling us that those of us who “lean towards traditional values” are on the road to the perdition of extremism. So whatever Sean Feucht is up to, it can’t be all bad.

[fvplayer id=”24″]

Losing the wonder of salvation

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Entropy is a measure of a system’s disorder; with time, it increases. When applied to the universe, it is a degradation of matter and energy to an eventual state of cold uniformity. When the universe reaches maximum entropy, it will be lifeless and inert. Reversing entropy is the stuff of science fiction, although I imagine it will happen at Christ’s return when the universe is remade.

I’ve come to think that there is also a form of spiritual entropy. When first we are saved from sin and reconciled to God, we are filled with the wonder of it all. John Bunyan put it like this (my emphasis):

Now I saw in my dream, that the highway up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Isaiah 26:1. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back.

He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, “He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.” Then he stood still a while, to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden.

When – or just before – I became a Christian in 1978, my first prayer was that if all the claims of Jesus were true, I would somehow be able to believe them. And, while you are at it, please give me a hand quitting smoking. The next morning I woke up convinced that Jesus is who he claims to be. And as a non-smoker.

I was overcome with the wonder of it all. How could He save a wretch like me? Numerous things that had made no sense suddenly came into focus like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle flying together with a loud click. Not everything became clear, of course: I still don’t understand quantum mechanics.

Over time, spiritual entropy sets in: the wonder of it all fades and I have once more to bring the early days to mind; to do otherwise is to grow cold to the Gospel or even forget what it is.

The church has the same problem. It doesn’t just grow cold, though, it replaces the Gospel with something else and calls it the Gospel. Social justice is the usual substitute. Or “equal marriage” as it’s called. Or “climate justice”. Or “inclusion”.

There is no wonder in these, just dreary shabbiness.

Eager to enter the competition for who can pollute the Gospel with the most drearily shabby, cliché-ridden tripe from the fevered imagination of underemployed theologians, ACNA has joined the race.  The Matthew 25 Initiative is live and is inviting all who wish to abandon their first love to join it. And lose the wonder of it all.

On social justice, ACNA now in hot pursuit of TEC

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I recently received an email extoling the benefits of attending a new ACNA course: Living Isa58, a project of the Matthew 25 Initiative (M25i for those who dislike typing).

There is a lot of what I would consider gobbledegook in the Matthew 25 Initiative. Here, (you have to sign up to read the whole thing) for example:

God’s purposes for this world are not for its destruction, but for its renewal. In the end, shalom is rewoven through all of creation and within all of God’s people. Peacemaking, then, is the work of co-substantiating this hope, the Kingdom of God, with God. It is pursuing justice and the reweaving of shalom with an orientation to healing and repair.

That sounds like what William Buckley used to call immanentizing the eschaton, although the next sentence was included to allay that suspicion:

God leads the work and will accomplish it fully at the final consummation of the new order, when heaven and earth become one. But today we are God’s co-creators: we are given the agency and ability to help put flesh on this coming Kingdom now. In word and deed, it is the very work of declaring the good news of the gospel: that Jesus is King and His Kingdom is at hand.

I remain suspicious and wonder whether the authors remember that Jesus also said “My Kingdom is not of this world”.

Archbishop Steve Wood has recorded a video on the Matthew 25 Initiative:

It was recorded in March and has had 285 views. One of those views was me. Such is the level of interest in what he had to say.

In his video he laments that some of what he says might be interpreted as political whereas, really, it is just the Gospel. He’s right, that is how I interpreted it. I have no problem with clergy venting their political inclinations, I just wish they wouldn’t call it the Gospel.

That’s how the rot set in with TEC and the ACoC.

For more evidence that this is political – generally left-leaning – the M25i’s white paper on peace-making (you have to sign up to see it) quotes a  Palestinian theologian Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb:

“Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb states, “Hope is what you do.”

I’m not sure what he means by that but, elsewhere, Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb is perfectly clear and perfectly political: Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza and the solution is political action. He doesn’t mention Hamas or any responsibility it might bear.

From here:

Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I started understanding her answer. In this context of a war crime, committed against the civilian population in Gaza, what is needed is more than prayer; what is needed is advocacy, what is needed is political action, what is needed is for people to go on the streets demanding an end to this aggression.

Similarly an M25i (yes, I know the abbreviation is irritating. It sounds like a UK motorway) white paper on immigration regrets that:

Churches in North America may not always be able to substantially influence public policy or affect changes to current laws that seem unjust, out-dated or contradictory.

The author clearly wants to influence public policy, a position I wouldn’t necessarily quarrel with had his archbishop not claim that it’s all about the Gospel not politics.

To be clear, as individuals I’m all for the Gospel influencing our political choices, but I’m wary when clergy start equating those choices with the Gospel.

Even allowing for the fact that, on occasion, I am given to undue pessimism, none of this looks good for ACNA.

Bishop of Ottawa Shane Parker elected primate

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In case anyone is under the impression that things are going to change under the new leader, Parker sets us straight by assuring us that “We need to think differently and behave differently.” Newspeak for thinking and behaving as we’ve done for years.

As a friend used to say when I worked at IBM and the management changed: “Same circus, different clowns”.

From here:

In a follow-up interview with the Journal, Parker added that he planned, as primate, to continue down the route of change set up by the listening process that brought forth the transformational commitments and the primate’s commission’s pathways—the set of recommendations calling for dramatic change in the church.

“A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that it is strategic or operational change when in fact it’s cultural change” that’s needed in the church now, he said. “We need to think differently and behave differently.” The rest of this week’s meeting of General Synod (running June 23-June 29) will determine the shape that change takes, he said.

In case you have any doubt:

Parker has spoken out publicly in support of LGBT people before, including as a signatory to the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives 2020 declaration, Declaring the Sanctity of Life and Dignity of All. In a 2023 letter Parker commended the commission and its work to his diocese amid what he described as an alarming increase in hateful words, actions and political posturing against LGBT people. “Not everyone or every parish in our diocese participates in Pride events, but each of us are called to participate in making a safe, loving space for 2SLGBTQI+ people, and to build meaningful connections with one another,” he said.

Does he even know what 2SLGBTQI+ people actually are? Does anyone?

Bishop Michael Curry preaches at the opening of the ACoC Synod

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He pointed out that the disciples, in spite of their humble origins, “changed the world”.

Quite true.

After his sermon the worship service was “characterized by [a] celebration of the cultural diversity within the Anglican Church of Canada”.

A celebration of how the world has changed the church.

And there’s the problem.

From here:

Curry also spoke about the limitations of Jesus’ disciples, noting that four of them—Peter, Andrew, James and John—were fishermen, yet never catch any fish in the Bible and relied upon Jesus to feed the multitude.

“They were not the A-Team of apostolic disciples,” Curry said. “And look what they did. There are followers of Jesus all over the world because of them … They changed the world.”

“What was true for them in the first century is true for us, the followers of Jesus, in the 21st century,” he added. “What was true in Jerusalem is true in London, Ontario… The power to be who God dreamed and intended us to be in the first place—when we live that, Anglican Church of Canada, it is no secret what God can do. What he did for Moses and Esther, what he did for ‘[not] the A-Team of apostolic disciples,’ he’ll do for you.”

Audience members interjected with shouts of “Amen” throughout Curry’s sermon, which anchored a worship service characterized by celebration of the cultural diversity within the Anglican Church of Canada.

The service began with the Algonquin “Water Song”, as singers beat their drums and faced the four directions of east, north, south and west, followed by the intertribal Indigenous “Strong Women’s Song.” The St. Paul’s choir led delegates in singing the hymn “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation” with an Indigenous smudging ceremony filling the worship space with the smell of sacred herbs.