God rather than men; the apostles' concern was not to defend themselves but to uplift Christ. *We must obey God rather than men!* they said (Acts 5:29), and in so doing laid down the principle of civil and ecclesiastical disobedience. To be sure, Christians are called to be conscientious citizens and generally speaking, to submit to human authorities. But if the authority concerned misuses its God-given power to command what he forbids or forbid what he commands, then the Christian's duty is to disobey the human authority in order to obey God's. --- John R.W. Stott

Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
April 10, 2015

According to the deep thinkers that have overtaken the cultural soil of America, you might think that churches endorsing same-sex marriage are overwhelmingly in the majority. You would be wrong.

The truth is there are a whole bunch of "missing" churches. The majority of church-affiliated Americans belong to denominations that forbid gay marriage, including Roman Catholics, most Baptists, Pentecostals, evangelicals, and Mormons.

Furthermore, Mainline Protestants have steadily lost ground in recent decades to other denominations, mainly evangelical, and to independent churches, precisely because of this. One of the biggest sexual offenders is The Episcopal Church, which has lost nearly 2 million members, forcing into existence the Anglican Church in North America as the orthodox Anglican branch of the Anglican Communion.

A denominational chart put out by the Religious News Service of same-sex marriage support has some interesting inclusions -- and omissions. "Taken together, the missing churches constitute tens of millions of members -- a significant slice of the U.S. religious pie -- all on record opposing redefinition of marriage. Meanwhile, all denominations nationally and globally that support same-sex marriage are in a state of decline."

The actual account is just over 20 million.

Here is a list of churches that have not embraced same-sex marriage. Jeff Walton of IRD compiled the list. All listed churches also oppose the redefinition of marriage:

Church of God in Christ 8,000,000
African Methodist Episcopal Church 2,510,000
Church of the Nazarene 2,295,106
Assemblies of God 1,755,872
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 1,400,000
Salvation Army 1,150,666
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church 850,000
Christian and Missionary Alliance 417,000
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod 380,728
Foursquare Church 353,995
Evangelical Free Church 371,191
Wesleyan Church 194,000
Association of Vineyard Churches 189,000
Baptist General Conference 147,500
Evangelical Presbyterian Church 145,000
North American Lutheran Church 140,000
Anglican Church in North America 112,504
Free Methodist Church 75,586

TOTAL: 20,488,148

This list does not include the Presbyterian Church in America or the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, all the Continuing Anglican churches, The Ordinariate churches, and many more.

Needless to say, you can count those churches that do support gay marriage and the whole pansexual agenda on less than two hands. They include: The Episcopal Church, The Presbyterian Church USA, Alliance of Baptists (whoever they are), The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Conservative, Judaism, and Reform Judaism, hardly a sterling group. They have rolled along with a culture that will, in time, make them spiritual and ecclesiastic widows. The problem with trying to meet a cultural moment is that you may be buried in it.

The notion that you can change the ontology and cosmology of human sexuality just to appease less than 1.7% of the pansexual population in America is absurd beyond all human understanding.

*****

The 150 plus Kenyan students killed on Maundy Thursday are martyrs, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in his Easter Day sermon at Canterbury Cathedral. "They are witnesses, unwilling, unjustly, wickedly, and they are martyrs in both senses of the word," the Most Rev. Justin Welby added.

In a pre-dawn attack on April 2, a gang of Islamic extremists killed security guards and attacked Moi University in the provincial town of Garissa in northwest Kenya. Somalia's al-Shabab Islamic militants claimed responsibility. Among the dead were 13 Christian Union members gathered for a pre-dawn prayer meeting. One of the dead was found still on his knees.

Dr. Welby continued, "These martyrs too are caught up in the resurrection: their cruel deaths, the brutality of their persecution, their persecution is overcome by Christ himself at their side because they share his suffering, at their side because he rose from the dead. Because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead the cruel are overcome, evil is defeated, martyrs conquer."

A host of Christian leaders, including Pope Francis, joined in expressing sorrow at the dreadful massacre. Perpetrators lined up students and asked them, "Are you Christian or Muslim?" Muslims were freed and Christians were executed -- either shot or their heads cut off. The number killed was the largest in Kenya since the Jihadist bombing of the American Embassy on August 7, 1998, which left 316 dead.

Garissa is located about 115 kilometers (70 miles) from Kenya's somewhat porous border with Somalia. Moi University was founded in 2011. Many of its students, mostly drawn from western Kenya, are Christians. Locals believe the death toll greatly exceeds official numbers.

In the wake of the slaughter of 147 Kenyan Christians this week, an Anglican bishop warns of plans to Balkanize the country. Katakwa Diocese Anglican Bishop, Zakayo Epus, warned of schemes to divide the country along religious lines.

He asked Kenyans to be vigilant and help the government fight terrorism. Addressing Christians during Easter Sunday service at St James Malaba Church, Epus said Kenyans should unite.

He noted that the war on terrorism starts with individuals, who should query the long absence of a neighbor.

"When a relative resurfaces after a long absence, try to enquire about the long absence," Epus added.

*****

Russell Ronald Reno III, the editor of First Things magazine and formerly professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University, has a take on the Roman Catholic Church that is worth reading.

"As I expected, the leaders of the Catholic Church have done everything they can to avoid saying anything in response to the furor over the Indiana RFRA. Their counsel is "dialogue," an unfortunate weasel word long used by administrators who don't want to take a stand.

"On its face, the wording of this bland statement suggests the bishops believe the Indiana law could permit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. (They're calling for "dialogue" to make sure that doesn't happen.) But this is an over-reading of the statement. It's really just a political evasion of responsibility searching for words.

"Some months ago, I predicted that Catholicism in America would basically accommodate itself to whatever sexual regime dominates our society. The accommodation won't be explicit. The Church won't endorse homosexuality or gay marriage. Instead, the bishops will step aside, avoid controversy, and just stop talking about things that carry a high price for dissent. This duck-and-cover non-statement fits perfectly into this trajectory.

"My first impulse is to laugh. The statement tries to signal support for religious freedom, but qualifies. "

The rights of a person should never be used inappropriately in order to deny the rights of another. So maybe Tim Cook is right to denounce the Indiana law. Time for dialogue. Oh, "justice and mercy" too. But wait, religious liberty is important. Except when it's not. But sometimes it really is . . .

"But I can't laugh, because the tragedy is too poignant. Doubtless there are faithful Catholics in Indiana who think marriage is only possible between a man and a woman. Doubtless they resist the pro-gay propaganda their children are subjected to by the media and often in school. Doubtless they try to support the Church's teaching on sex, family, and marriage. In the midst of a propaganda blitz denouncing all dissent from the coming regime of gay rights, this anodyne non-statement says to them, 'You're on your own.'"

*****

Inhibited Episcopal Bishop Heather Cook pled not guilty in Baltimore Circuit Court in the hit-and-run death of a bicyclist this week. A judge set June 4th as the date for her manslaughter trial.

Cook, who was installed last year as the Maryland Diocese's first female bishop, is charged with driving while inebriated and texting when she struck and killed Thomas Palermo, 41, a father of two, last December.

Cook hasn't spoken publicly since her arrest. Her lawyer, David Irwin, hasn't commented except to say that she acknowledges she was involved in the crash and that she has been in a residential treatment center since the incident.

The collision, which police said happened after Cook veered into the bike lane, horrified Baltimore-area cyclists, who noted that she left the scene despite having a heavily broken windshield. Following the accident, her "significant other," a divorced former Episcopal priest, the Rev. Mark Hansen, bailed her out. The diocese has steadfastly refused to answer questions put by VOL as to the nature of the couple's relationship and whether such a relationship would also have precluded her from becoming a bishop. Now secular justice will render whatever future she has.

*****

Native American tribes across the country have completely banned same-sex marriage on tribal lands. Months before the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the issue of gay marriage, Native American tribes have taken steps to defend traditional marriage.

Eleven tribes with a total membership approaching a million people will not recognize same-sex marriages.

Just weeks after North Carolina began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, the state's Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians updated its law to prevent gay couples from having marriage ceremonies on tribal land.

Tribes that don't recognize same-sex marriage include the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and the Navajo Nation.

This is bigger than refusing to bake a cake or cater or provide flowers for a gay wedding - Native Americans are saying you can't have a same-sex wedding on tribal lands AT ALL!

Will anyone call these tribes bigots? Or threaten to boycott or whatever? Probably not. But kudos to them for standing on their principles!

*****

Bishop G. Porter Taylor of the Diocese of Western North Carolina has announced he will resign at the end of September 2016. Taylor, 65, was consecrated as the sixth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina on Sept. 18, 2004.

"I have been honored to be your bishop for this past decade. It has been a privilege beyond my dreams. I have travelled the globe and represented you to the wider Church. Most of all, I have been honored to be part of your lives and your parishes' lives as your bishop -- to confirm/receive, to baptize, to ordain, to celebrate new ministries, to bury, to celebrate and give thanks to the Lord. We have labored together; we have started new initiatives; we have been blessed by the Lord in smooth and rocky times."

Porter's tenure was distinguished by his inability to say or do anything of worth during his episcopacy. His diocese, like so many others, continues to decline. Between 2003 and 2013 his diocese fell from 7,044 to 6,517 parishioners for an overall net loss of 7.5%. The only thing steadily going up has been his pension.

*****

The Anglican Communion Office has a new Secretary General in the person of Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon of the Anglican Diocese of Kaduna, Nigeria. This was a very shrewd move by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. The Global South primates and GAFCON (especially and including Nigeria) have declared themselves to be in impaired communion with the Instruments of Unity over homosexuality. Fearon has ripped the homosexual agenda of the West in the past, so Welby has no problem with Fearon being orthodox; the problem for Welby comes when people say orthodoxy must mean drawing some boundaries, for example, with The Episcopal Church. It is certain Fearon would never have gotten the job if he was not going to go along with Indaba and TEC's continual million dollar input. If some in The Episcopal Church should attack Fearon for being "anti-gay," it would be just fine for Welby as it reinforces his middle ground honest broker narrative.

Nigerian Primate Nicholas Okoh sent Fearon a "good will" message, but the Nigerians will bide their time before they fully endorse him.

Of course, former PB Frank Griswold weighed in and gave his approval to Fearon. "Josiah is, above all, a man of communion, a careful listener, and a respecter of the different ways in which we are called to articulate and live the good news of God in Jesus Christ."

He is "committed to God's mission of reconciliation". But as one commentator noted, "He isn't, of course, because God's reconciliation is for us to reconcile to himself through his Son. God expects us to love one another: if a fellow Christian departs from the faith once delivered, it isn't loving for everyone to pretend nothing is wrong by institutionalizing a bogus state of reconciliation."

Connecticut Bishop Ian Douglas, a member of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, said he has known Idowu-Fearon for more than a decade through a variety of inter-Anglican bodies and responsibilities. He finds him to be "committed to God's mission of reconciliation, both between people of different faiths and between the churches of the Anglican Communion."

One might be tempted to take comfort in the hope that Idowu-Fearon could scarcely be worse than his predecessor, Kenneth Kearon, whose facility for churning out densely packed cliches was unmatched by even the most tenaciously vacuous bishops in Western Anglicanism.

I have written about this appointment and you can read it here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/nhgykbm

*****

The Diocese of Atlanta's clergy renewed their vows at The Temple, Atlanta's oldest Jewish synagogue this past week. Next year Atlanta's Episcopal clergy could be renewing their vows in an Islamic mosque.

This was the "brain" child of diocesan Bishop Robert Wright (who is clearly wrong), but done in the name of ecumenical relations and "why can't we all just get along" niceness. No Jews for Jesus were invited. You can read the full story in today's digest.

*****

As the Culture Wars heat up in America, so does the opposition, albeit without the media hype from the New York Times and other liberal media in the country.

This week a group calling themselves Common Ground Christian Network is calling American Christians to stand together to focus on threats to religious liberties.

They say their religious liberties are threatened as they face persecution across the globe.

"The backlash to proposed religious freedom laws in Indiana, Arkansas and Georgia comes from a culture that is increasingly uncomfortable with Christians living out their faith in public. Bible-believing Christians must practically and prayerfully support each other," Carmen Fowler LaBerge, President of the CGCN, said. "We must also stand together to support our Christian brothers and sisters in Kenya, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria and those places where the church faces physical threats and extermination."

You can read the full story here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/qfmva5y

*****

Several landmarked houses of worship in Midtown Manhattan in New York are working together to develop rules changes that would allow them to sell their air rights for projects farther away than currently allowed under city rules, according to the New York Business Journal.

At the moment, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Central Synagogue, and St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church are only allowed to sell air rights for developments adjacent to their properties, but most of those opportunities are already fully developed, the Wall Street Journal explained. Those air rights could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars at each site, the report added.

Such a proposal isn't new. In 2013, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration tried to push rules changes that would allow the houses of worship to sell their air rights farther afield as part of a Midtown East rezoning. However, as the WSJ noted, that provision was later dropped.

Manhattan's borough president Gale Brewer and City Council member Dan Garodnick both appear open to rules changes that would let those institutions sell those air rights for revenue that would go toward maintenance, the WSJ said. Opponents have argued that if not done carefully, the transferred air rights might become a problem by opening a back door for overdevelopment in neighborhoods that had seemingly been fully developed already, according to the report.

*****

400 plus Catholic, Evangelical leaders want to kill the death penalty. "When they look at Christ on the cross, it's a reminder of how very many millions of people have been executed by government in history and how grotesque it really is and, often, how unjust it is," said David Gushee, an evangelical ethicist at Mercer University in Atlanta.

Gushee is one of the signers of the statement, as are two former presidents of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston and William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash.); Miguel Diaz, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See; and Jim Wallis, founder of the progressive Christian group Sojourners.

The letter urges governors, judges, and prosecutors to end the death penalty, which the letter calls a "practice that diminishes our humanity and contributes to a culture of violence and retribution without restoration."

Other signers include death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean of "Dead Man Walking" fame; Lynne Hybels, wife of Willowcreek megachurch founder Bill Hybels; the Very Rev. Timothy P. Kesicki, head of all Jesuit priests in the U.S. and Canada; and Richard Cizik, a former vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The letter follows a similar call by the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, which recently became the first national evangelical group to publicly call for an end to capital punishment, and Pope Francis, who called it "inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed."

As more groups are speaking about the issue, the letter also notes that it is "shameful" that the United States is one of the few developed nations that continues to execute convicts. According to Amnesty International's 2014 report, about a third of the world has the death penalty but only nine nations regularly use it, including the United States, Iran, China, Sudan and North Korea.

"In a nation that values the dignity of all people, we must act out of that dignity as a society," said a leading activist against the death penalty.

To supporters of the death penalty, Gushee said he would "ask them to look at the arbitrariness of our death penalty system, the bias along the lines of race and class, the manifestly random way in which a small number of murderers are punished by death, and agree that the system is broken."

*****

A recent New York Times column by Frank Bruni, entitled "Bigotry, the Bible and the Lessons of Indiana," stressed that it's time for traditional faiths to change their doctrines and that they "must be made" to do so. "Homosexuality and Christianity don't have to be in conflict in any church anywhere," argued Bruni. "That many Christians regard them as incompatible is understandable, an example not so much of hatred's pull as of tradition's sway. ... But in the end, the continued view of gays, lesbians and bisexuals as sinners is a decision. It's a choice. It prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since -- as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing." Really.

"Jousting With The New York Times 1961-2014: Worldviews in Radical Conflict." While the editors appear to believe that there is "good religion" as well as "bad religion," he said, the key is that they attack those who defend "absolute, transcendent" doctrines about moral issues.

So Bruni believes that the ultimate standard is a radical individualism which trumps all other arguments.

For a contra point of view, read the New York Times interview Ross Douthat has with himself, posted in today's digest. A much saner approach to the Great Debate over Sodomy.

*****

Happiness "turn your scars into star" preacher Robert Schuller died this week aged 88. His was the left coast's answer to Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking doctrine and a forerunner to the Seeker Sensitive Movement.

He grew up Reformed but found preaching their doctrines too tough for Californians who much preferred an easier California-friendly Jesus to follow. Schuller gave it to them weekly in his Crystal cathedral. The irony should not be missed. Having abandoned his reformed doctrines, his TV ministry over time started to evaporate and finally went bankrupt. The Roman Catholic Church bought his cathedral! Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor.

I had a run in with Schuller as Religion Editor of the Vancouver Province, decades ago, when he came to our fair city. I asked him if his happiness gospel warranted any need for repentance and faith and was the cross really relevant to his ministry and to peoples' lives! Needless to say, he got huffy with me in front of the Rotary Club saying the question was impertinent. (I really must stop making enemies.)

*****

An online fundraising effort has raised more than $840,000 for an Indiana pizza shop hounded by critics after one of its owners said she would decline to cater a gay wedding because of her religious beliefs.

Memories Pizza temporarily closed its doors after the Walkerton business came under intense criticism following comments made by one of its owners, Crystal O'Connor, to a news station as controversy raged over Indiana's "religious freedom" law this week.

"If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no," O'Connor, who described the business as a "Christian establishment," told ABC57.

The GoFundMe account was set up by Lawrence Billy Jones III, a contributor for the conservative news platform The Blaze. The online fundraiser raised the staggering sum in just three days.

VOL would like to raise just one tenth of that amount to stay in business. Within a month of these VIEWPOINTS being posted, some 3,000 to 4,000 of you will read them and then move on. We are not in the business of making money, just paying our bills while keeping you informed and staying afloat.

Please consider a tax deductible donation to keep us afloat. Is that really too much to ask?

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In Christ,

David