Anglicanism

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Which candidate did Hell endorse? That isn't the real question facing believers right now

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Which candidate did Hell endorse? That isn't the real question facing believers right now

Forget the opinions of newspaper czars, the question many voters needed to know in this feverish White House race was simple: Who did Hell endorse?

Writing in the style "The Screwtape Letters" by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, in which a veteran tempter lectures lesser demons, Dominick Baruffi didn't answer that question. But his satirical lecture by the Infernal National Convention chairman "Gurtfoot" stressed that this year's options were truly hellish.

"Almost everything said in front of a camera is said for the purposes of being seen while saying it, and any policy has become entirely secondary to their celebrity," wrote Baruffi, a Westminster Theological Seminary graduate who works as a counselor for troubled children.

His demon "Gurtfoot" added: "What are the humans to do but either spend their time quarreling over choosing 'the lesser of two evils' or permit themselves to drift into apathy and ignorance? Of course, both are perfectly acceptable outcomes in our eyes. … If we can continue to produce candidates such as these two halfwits in the years to come our victory is all but assured."

But the main goal of the "Screwtape Endorses a Candidate" essay was not to slam the Republican and Democratic candidates. Instead, Baruffi focused on an issue discussed by insiders -- whether the acid of recent elections has warped how Christians view politics.

With President Donald Trump returning to the White House, progressive religious leaders will feel an immediate stab of disappointment. But believers on the left and right will soon have to face the fact that compromises are painful in a bitterly divided nation.

Thus, Baruffi's proud tempter noted: "The modern man now sees politics as repugnant, wholly undesirable and certainly unable to be discussed reasonably with others. …This is a great victory for our kind. The less the humans are made to think of the IDEA of politics, the more isolated and fractured they become, thus making them more vulnerable to our advances."

If millions of believers choose to flee politics, that will be tragic.

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When a Doritos chip becomes a meme: Progressive take on Holy Communion?

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When a Doritos chip becomes a meme: Progressive take on Holy Communion?

On election night in 2016, an event offering pain as well as triumph, Kamala Harris dug into a big bag of salty snack-food consolation.

"It was incredibly bittersweet. When I took the stage for my acceptance speech -- to represent California in the Senate -- I tore up my notes. I just said, 'We will fight,' " said Vice President Harris in a fundraising letter for her White House campaign.

"Then I went home, and I sat on the couch with a family-sized bag of nacho Doritos. I did not share one chip with anybody. ... Two things are true eight years later: I still love Doritos and we still have not stopped fighting."

Thus, in her campaign against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump -- whose 2016 victory angered her -- the Harris team has used Doritos as a symbol of the feisty, combative side of her personality.

Thus, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently made waves with a social-media clip in which she placed a Dorito on the tongue of podcaster Liz Plank, a popular online "influencer" and MSNBC contributor.

Many Catholics cried "foul," since Plank was kneeling and appeared to be imitating the posture of a believer receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion. After the video went viral, defenders of Whitmer and Plank said they were merely offering their take on a TikTok meme in which someone feeds food to a friend, and then awkwardly stares into the camera.

It didn't help that the full version of the video -- produced for Plank's "feministabulous" Instagram page -- also focused on debates about abortion rights. In the past, Plank has called faith-based crisis-pregnancy centers "fake clinics."

The president of the Michigan Catholic Conference was not amused.

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What did a Boomer priest learn from a year leading a flock of Millennials?

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What did a Boomer priest learn from a year leading a flock of Millennials?

As a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, Father Stephen Noll felt a sense of loss when he learned he would need a smartphone app to attend baseball games.

Noll calls himself a "digital dinosaur, perhaps from the Jurassic period." What he didn't expect, after 50 years of priesthood, was for this digital divide to affect his ministry.

"I am fundamentally app-horrent," he wrote in "Millennial People, Boomer Priest," a book of lessons from his year as a young parish's interim pastor. The big problem was staying in contact with members of Redeemer Anglican Church, in north Pittsburgh. It was even harder to reach potential converts who kept walking through the doors.

"Caving to the need to reach my Millennial parishioners," he wrote, "I learned to text with the help of the voice input mic, which is a good thing since it seems no one answers voice messages -- or even answers the phone at all!"

Noll was 74 when he became interim pastor on May 1, 2021, after the traumas -- in pews and pulpits -- of the coronavirus pandemic. He decided that many young adults were wrestling with anxiety, loneliness and other painful realities that were both modern and ancient.

According to the 2022 American Religious Benchmark Survey, many people stopped attending worship during the pandemic. Surveys before 2020 found that 25% of Americans never attended services. It was 33% in 2022.

But something else was happening during those years. Surveys found that 19% of Americans changed from one religious affiliation to another, including 6% of those who were religiously unaffiliated before COVID-19.

Noll said some of the young adults in his pews were asking hard questions about the brokenness around them, including in their own lives and the homes in which they were raised.

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Canterbury Cathedral throws a flashy disco rite for chic modern pilgrims

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Canterbury Cathedral throws a flashy disco rite for chic modern pilgrims

The Gothic Revival sanctuary of the former Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion was a strange edifice to house a dance club, but that's what happened in the early 1980s with the infamous Limelight club in New York City.

Rocker Steve Taylor penned a snarky tribute, including this pounding chorus: "This disco used to be a cute cathedral / Where we only play the stuff you're wanting to hear … / This disco used to be a cute cathedral / But we got no room if you ain't gonna be chic."

Four decades later, this song surfaced during online chatter about the February 8-9 dance nights inside Canterbury Cathedral, the Church of England's most hallowed sanctuary.

Dubbed the "rave in the nave" by critics, revelers gulped drinks from the bar and sang along to hits streamed by DJs into rented headphones. One participant described dancing to "Horny" by Mousse T. -- "I'm horny, horny, horny, horny, I'm horny, horny, horny, horny tonight" -- not far from the stone tiles on which St. Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170.

"The decline of Western Christendom continues unabated," noted Taylor, via email. His song, with its Limelight callout, was a critique of modernized brand of faith that sacrifices its message to gain popular appeal. "I think that I referred to it as country club Christianity."

Outside Canterbury Cathedral, one protester told The Telegraph: "Thomas Becket is buried in the same location in this cathedral as our late Queen is buried in St George's Chapel. Would it be acceptable to have a rave in that place? Would anyone accept that? … This is going to make people take the church less seriously than they did before, rather than more seriously."

Canterbury's dean rejected the "rave in the nave" label and argued that the "90s-themed silent disco" would show proper respect for the cathedral's cultural and arts heritage.

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Fiducia Supplicans puzzle: Europe is in decline, but still seems to steer Catholicism?

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Fiducia Supplicans puzzle: Europe is in decline, but still seems to steer Catholicism?

Bishop Martin Mtumbuka pulled no punches when passing judgement on the Vatican's stunning declaration that Catholic clergy could bless couples living in "irregular relationships," such as same-sex unions.

This "looks to us like a heresy, it reads like a heresy, and it affects heresy," he said. "We cannot allow such an offensive and apparently blasphemous declaration to be implemented in our dioceses" in southeast Africa.

The Fiducia Supplicans ("Supplicating Trust") document triggered debates around the world, but negative reactions have been especially strong in Africa, with strong protests from bishops' conferences in Malawi, Zambia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Angola and other nations.

"The Church of Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small," wrote Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the former head of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. "It has the task of announcing the Word of God in front of Western Christians who, because they are rich, equipped with multiple skills in philosophy, theological, biblical and canonical sciences, believe they are evolved, modern and wise in the wisdom of the world."

Cardinal Sarah endorsed the declarations from African bishops and added: "We must encourage other national or regional bishops' conferences and every bishop to do the same. By doing so, we are not opposing Pope Francis, but we are firmly and radically opposing a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and Tradition."

These tensions resemble doctrinal fault lines seen during the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, noted historian Philip Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" and "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions" and many other books.

"Religious faith and fertility are linked and it's easy to see that around the world," said Jenkins, reached by Zoom.

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Big 2023 religion news? Godbeat scribes say 'spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism'

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Big 2023 religion news? Godbeat scribes say 'spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism'

The Hamas surprise attack on Israeli citizens was selected as the year's most important international story by religion-beat journalists, in part because it led to "spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism" when Israel launched its massive counterattack on Gaza.

Members of the Religion News Association echoed that decision when voting to select the top 2023 religion story in America.

"Incidents of hate against Jews and Muslims skyrocket after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, and Israel's military assault in Gaza," noted the RNA, in its poll. "In Illinois, a Palestinian-American boy is killed, and his mother wounded in an alleged hate attack. The conflict prompts numerous protests, and college campuses see fierce debate about the war and the boundaries of free speech."

The generational nature of the U.S. debates was underlined in a Harvard-Harris poll in which 60% of respondents aged 18-24 agreed that the "Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians and the kidnapping of another 250 civilians can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians." In that poll, 67% of participants in that same age group affirmed that "Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors," as opposed to 9% of respondents older than 65.

The Anti-Defamation League reported 2,031 antisemitic incidents in the United States between October 7 and December 7. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, noted CNN, reported 2,171 U.S. claims of Islamophobic "bias or requests for help" between October 7 and December 2.

For many years, the RNA published one annual list of the world's most important religion-news events and trends. For the second year in a row, the organization produced separate American and global lists. The next few American selections were:

* Legislative and legal battles continued after he 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, with numerous states banning or restricting abortion and others solidifying access to abortions. U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville blocked hundreds of military job nominations and promotions, while protesting a White House policy that allowed U.S. soldiers to travel to obtain abortions in states where these procedures are more easily available.

* At least 25% of United Methodist congregations left America's second-largest Protestant denomination, following decades of conflict about biblical authority and ancient doctrines on marriage and sexuality, including the ordination of noncelibate LGBTQ+ clergy.

* Debates over LGBTQ+ issues caused increased levels of local and national turmoil, especially in clashes over parental rights, school assignments, drag-queen events, pronoun policies and the rights of transgender athletes.

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Global South Anglican leaders try to push past LGBTQ wars and into future (Part II)

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Global South Anglican leaders try to push past LGBTQ wars and into future (Part II)

Want to know how to cause a church split?

The deepest fault lines -- sex, money and pride -- have been obvious for centuries, said Archbishop Kanishka Raffel of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia.

"We use nationality or age or gender or wealth or clothing or accent or profession or politics -- to show off and communicate who we are and what sort of person we will or will not engage with," said Raffel, who was born in London, of Sri Lankan descent, and raised Buddhist.

"God's people are frail and very human. We bear the marks of weakness and humiliation. We can be loveless, faithless, tolerant of the intolerable and wretchedly self-satisfied. … God is angry about the abuse of people that comes through sexual immorality, greed and hateful, deceitful and cruel speech. We are not surprised."

For decades, he acknowledged, the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion have been rocked by divisions over biblical authority and colonial-era ecclesiastical structures -- with LGBTQ disputes grabbing headlines.

During the recent Global Anglican Future Conference, held in Kigali, Rwanda, Raffel was one of several bishops -- 315 attended, from 52 nations -- who stressed that traditionalists now need to look forward. It's time to focus on life in their rapidly growing churches, while dedicating less time and energy to clashes with declining churches in England, America, Canada and elsewhere.

This will, Raffel stressed, require looking in the mirror.

"We have been engaged in decades long conversation about sexual immorality. But we have often focused on one form of sexual sin, to the neglect of sexual sins which perhaps are more common among us and just as displeasing to God," he said. "How many women ... have shed rivers of tears over the way their sexuality has been misused by others? I suppose it would be millions. There is a self-serving blind spot of which we must repent, a log in our own eyes with which we are yet to deal. Lord, have mercy."

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Was this news? Global South Anglicans try to cut some Canterbury ties (Part I)

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Was this news? Global South Anglicans try to cut some Canterbury ties (Part I)

After a half-century of decline, the U.S. Episcopal Church has 1.5 million members, and its average weekly attendance was just above 500,000 before COVID-19 and 300,000 afterwards.

After decades of explosive growth, the Anglican Church of Nigeria claims about 18 million members (others say 8 million), and the Center for Global Christianity near Boston estimates it has 22 million active participants in worship.

Caught in the middle of these two trends is the Most Reverend Justin Welby, by Divine Providence the 105th Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and the "first among equals" among bishops in the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion. While his own flock claims 26 million baptized members, about 600,000 attend weekly services.

Now, Global South church leaders -- representing about 75% of Anglicans who frequent pews -- have decided that it's time to start cutting ties between the "Canterbury Communion" and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

“We have no confidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the other Instruments of Communion led by him … are able to provide a godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency and authority of Scripture," warned the Global Anglican Future Conference, which met April 17-21 in Kigali, Rwanda. GAFCON IV drew 1,302 delegates from 52 nations, including 315 bishops.

Meeting together, leaders of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches said they "can no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the 'first among equals' of the Primates. The Church of England has chosen to impair her relationship with the orthodox provinces in the Communion."

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Anglican same-sex blessings: Has archbishop of Canterbury taken a bridge too far?

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Anglican same-sex blessings: Has archbishop of Canterbury taken a bridge too far?

In England, proclaiming God's blessing on same-sex relationships has become the new orthodoxy for clergy with established ties to the powers that be.

But not in Nigeria and the Global South, where Anglican leaders have urged the Church of England to consider the impact of its actions on believers facing conflict with Jihadi terrorists.

"I am genuinely torn by this," said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, about an appeal for General Synod leaders to consult with Anglican primates around the world before proceeding. "It isn't just about listening to the rest of the world -- it's caring. Let's just be clear on that. It's about people who will die, women who will be raped, children who will be tortured.

"So, when we vote, we need to think of that. It's not just about what people will say -- it is about what they will suffer."

But after years of tense dialogues and visiting war zones, Welby told the synod to proceed. Thus, the General Synod bishops, clergy and laity voted 250-181 to offer blessing rites for same-sex couples married by the state -- while retaining church doctrine that marriage is between a man and a woman.

"For the first time, the Church of England will publicly, unreservedly and joyfully welcome same-sex couples in church," said Welby and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, in their Feb. 9 statement. Anglicans have "deep differences on these questions which go to the heart of our human identity."

This move angered LGBTQ activists who said mere "blessings" were not enough, while leaders of giant Anglican churches in Africa and Asia also rejected the compromise.

Welby said he had little or no choice, when addressing a Feb. 12 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Accra, Ghana.

After the synod vote, he said, "I was summoned twice to Parliament and threatened with parliamentary action to force same-sex marriage on us, called in England 'equal marriage.'"