It becomes progressively more and more difficult to find worthwhile stuff about which to blog or comment these days. My erstwhile denomination, the Episcopal Church (USA), has sunk into the mire of blasphemy and irrelevance, and is not even worthy any more of notice. My country is headed by an utterly self-absorbed, pusillanimous and law-breaking President, whom neither his friends nor his enemies will rein in. It has a Congress consisting largely of people so absorbed by their need to get re-elected that they are afraid to have any principles, and consequently are beneath contempt. And it has five Supreme Court justices who simply mock the law and their function as the tribunal of last resort in a putative democracy, and see nothing wrong with making up the law as they go, while openly flouting their contempt for the rule of law. --- Allan S. Haley, The Anglican Curmudgeon

Those of us who fear that Islamic radicals might be lurking among the refugees have been called every name in the book: bigots, Islamophobes and un-American. But the cold hard reality is that Protestants, Catholics and Jews aren't the ones beheading people. --- Todd Starnes

Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
November 20, 2015

We need a religious response to ISIS, says Greg Scandlen of THE FEDERALIST. "Watching and reading all the news about the Paris attacks by eight Muslim fanatics has been disconcerting. All of the analysis has been about how we should respond diplomatically and militarily. These things should certainly be done, but there is a gaping hole in the analysis: the religious response.

"It is hard for the secular Western press to grasp, but ISIS is primarily a religious movement. These people take their religion very seriously, indeed--to the point that they are perfectly willing, even joyful, to sacrifice their lives in obedience to God.

"To most of the Western press this idea is madness--mass insanity. The secular media has little doubt that God is a myth, and it is beyond their belief system that anyone would die in service to a fantasy. To the extent they recognize religion at all, it is the type of westernized milquetoast mainline religion that is mostly a cultural artifact. People who go to church do so for nostalgia. They take comfort in ancient rituals and traditions. Nobody can actually believe this stuff.

"Yet people have been willing to die in service to God for a very long time. All of the apostles except John did so, as did many thousands of Christian martyrs during the reign of Nero. Even today thousands of Christians are being killed, even beheaded and crucified, because they will not deny God. While Christian martyrs and Muslim terrorists are both willing to die, only the latter are willing to execute others for their beliefs."

In the meantime, millions of Muslims are converting to Christianity.

That is a very big difference. Christians believe people come to Jesus because he has called them, not because of social pressure or terroristic threats. As Christians, all we can do is show love, preach the gospel, and witness to what Jesus has done in our own lives. Then we pray that our example and witness will open the hearts of others to be more receptive to the Spirit of God. Most of us aren't very good at this, but that is the model we try to follow.

And this model works. Millions of Muslims are converting to Christianity as a result. The Lapps are old order Amish who were prompted to become missionaries by the international attention given to the Amish after their example of love and forgiveness following the 2006 school shooting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

They have traveled all over the world explaining how they were able to do this. One of the trips took them to a medical mission in Iraq, where one of the Iraqi physicians said to them, "When Muslims come here, they come to kill, but Christians come to help. How can I become a Christian?"

ANOTHER perspective about France's "massive" retaliation for the Paris attacks is from Israel. Israel must naturally feel that when they respond to terror they are held to a double standard by the international community.

French President Francois Hollande called the terrorist attacks an act of war and promised that France would take revenge. On Sunday, 12 aircraft--including 10 fighter jets--dropped a total of 20 bombs on Raqqa, ISIS' de-facto capital.

"It was normal to take the initiative and action and France had the legitimacy to do so. We did it already in the past. We have conducted new airstrikes in Raqqa today," France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. "One cannot be attacked harshly, and you know the drama that is happening in Paris, without being present and active."

Now Israelis are asking themselves how the world would respond had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the same remarks following Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis. They have little doubt that Netanyahu would be denigrated for suggesting that it was "normal" and "legitimate" to respond the way France has. Good question.

Pope Francis didn't just criticize the ISIS attacks in Paris. He pretty much damned them. His weekend reactions used both religious and humanitarian terms--"blasphemy," "not human," "homicidal hatred." It was some of Francis' strongest language yet.

The attacks, Pope Francis said, were an "unspeakable affront to the dignity of the human person."
"The path of violence and hatred cannot resolve the problems of humanity, and using the name of God to justify this path is blasphemy," he said.

And the best Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry could come up with was a milquetoast response telling Episcopalians to say the Lord's Prayer, with no indictment against the Islamic State.

Later he addressed the Syrian refugee crisis and said this: "Be not afraid! In times like this fear is real. And I share that fear with you. Our instinct tells us to be afraid. The fight-or-flight mentality takes hold. At the present moment, many across our Church and our world are grasped by fear in response to the terrorist attacks that unfolded in Paris last Friday. These fears are not unfounded. We can and should support law enforcement officials who are working hard and at great risk to protect us from crime and keep us safe. And yet, especially when we feel legitimate fear, our faith reminds us 'Be not afraid.' The larger truth is that our ultimate security comes from God in Christ.

"Refugees from places like Syria seek to escape the precise same ideological and religious extremism that gave birth to the attacks in Paris. They seek entry into our communities because their lives are imprisoned by daily fear for their existence." Let's hope the State Department vets these folk.

*****

The lesbian suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, Mary Glasspool, is leaving Los Angeles and moving to the Big Apple--New York City. She will become an assistant bishop in the Diocese of New York next April. At the time of her installation, Glasspool was the 17th woman to be elected a bishop in The Episcopal Church, and the first openly lesbian woman to become a bishop in the Anglican Communion.

She should fit right into decadent New York City with nary a peep about her sexual preferences. The Bishop of New York, Andrew Dietsche, told delegates at the diocese's annual convention that "she will bless us in myriad ways, and it is such a personal joy to make this announcement!" Sure she will. She can minister the new "evangelism" of PB Michael Curry to all the lesbian bars in NYC with her partner as she shares her faith story, whatever that is. God help us all.

*****

The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina has announced that the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee will serve as assisting bishop on Dec. 1. He is the former Bishop of Virginia.

The Rt. Rev. Anne E. Hodges-Copple, Bishop Pro Tem for the Diocese of North Carolina, said, "Bishop Lee is a man of great faithfulness, great wisdom, vast experience, and he will bring us a calm and steadying hand that will multiply into all kinds of blessings."

"We feel very fortunate to be coming back to North Carolina," said Bishop Lee. "We consider Chapel Hill home, and I'm eager to be of assistance to [Bishop Hodges-Copple], to serving God and the people of the Diocese of North Carolina."

*****

The Diocese of Northern Indiana announced five nominees for bishop to replace the retiring Edward S. Little II. The slate of five nominees to stand for the election as the eighth bishop of the diocese are:

The Rev. Canon Lynn Carter-Edmands, Canon for Formation and Transition, Diocese of Southern Ohio
The Rev. Canon Andrew T. Gerns, Rector of Trinity Church, Easton, Pennsylvania
The Rev. Susan B. Haynes, Rector of St. Paul's Church, Mishawaka, Indiana
The Rev. Douglas E. Sparks, Rector of St. Luke's Church, Rochester, Minnesota
The Very Rev. Raymond J. Waldon, Dean of St. Mark's Cathedral, Salt Lake City

VOL searched through their resumes and could not find a single nominee who could be described as orthodox in faith and moral teaching. Bishop Little was an outspoken evangelical, and a Communion Partner bishop. His orthodox legacy will now die with him. The most likely winner is Waldon. He has impeccable liberal credentials; plus, he kept St. Mark's on track as the host cathedral at the last General Convention in Salt Lake City. He's smooth, charming and debonair, the perfect counterpoint to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

*****

The Church Pension Fund of the Episcopal Church will now offer retirement benefits for same-gender spouses, VOL learned this week.

"As you know, if you are legally married to a same-gender spouse, your spouse is eligible for full spousal benefits if you earn at least three years of credited service while married.

"Acknowledging that same-gender marriage was only recently recognized by all 50 states, and also in response to General Convention Resolution 2015-D047, we are relaxing eligibility requirements for same-gender spouses until December 31, 2017.

"Specifically, whether you are active or retired, we are allowing same-gender spouses to receive full (or partial) spousal benefits if you are legally married and can present an Affidavit of Committed Relationship by December 31, 2017, to prove your spouse's eligibility for benefits. Same-gender surviving spouses of retired participants may also be eligible for spousal benefits under certain circumstances."

*****

From Mississauga, Ontario in Canada comes news that half a millennium after the birth of the movement that saw much of western Europe torn by religious wars, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches are now contemplating taking communion together, Council of General Synod (CoGS) members and their counterparts in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) heard at a joint session of CoGS Saturday, November 14.

In a presentation on the commemoration in 2017 of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the Rev. Andre Lavergne, assistant to the bishop, ecumenical and interfaith at ELCIC, said American Lutherans and Catholics took an extremely important step last month.

On October 30, the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops jointly issued a document entitled Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry and Eucharist. The document, Lavergne said, invites the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to "create a process and timetable to address outstanding issues" between them. It also suggests there should be more opportunities for Lutherans and Catholics to receive Holy Communion together, he said.

The document itself states that "the possibility of occasional admission of members of our churches to Eucharistic communion with the other side (communicatio in sacris) could be offered more clearly and regulated more compassionately."

Although baptized non-Roman Catholics are occasionally given communion by Catholic priests in certain circumstances, the practice is currently very rare.

"If that comes to fruition, we've reached a major, major milestone...I didn't believe it until I'd read it myself," Lavergne said.

"Who knows what tomorrow will bring, in a place where 500 years after the Reformation, Lutherans and Catholics are talking about communion together?"

*****

Arson hit Masjid Al-Salaam, a mosque in Peterborough, Ontario, and Shazim Khan, the imam of the mosque, was immediately surrounded by supportive Anglicans. It was an "isolated incident. This will not change our perception of this community, which is peaceful, loving and welcoming." Anglican churches rallied and joined the broader Peterborough community in an outpouring of support and generosity for the members of the city's only mosque. Committed late in the evening of November 14, the attack was probably a hate crime.

The clericus of the regional deanery of Peterborough donated an initial $250 and called on all deanery parishes to match this amount, which should bring in several thousand dollars, according to Dean Gloria Master. "We received a message from Bishop Linda Nicholls saying, 'Do what you can in reaching out.' Almost all of our congregations have offered matching funds."

All Saints' and St. Luke's Anglican parishes offered to provide the mosque's members with worship, meeting and educational facilities. "A couple of other Anglican churches also offered space, but All Saints' is more centrally located," said Master.

"It is possible that we may use the All Saints' space offer once we know our space needs," said Dr. Kenzu Abdella, president of the Kawartha Muslim Religious Association (KMRA) and chair of Trent University's department of mathematics.

*****

RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE AND BIBLICAL ANSWERS by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Rabbi Sacks talks with Mark Bauerlein of FIRST THINGS and discusses his new book, Not In God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, a timely rumination upon religious conflict in the world today. The standard conception of episodes of religious violence, namely, that extremist faith leads to fanatical aggression, is mistaken, he argues. The horrors we have witnessed have other sources, primarily sibling rivalry (broadly conceived), which, though often expressed through religious differences, can be reconciled through religious instruction. For Rabbi Sacks, our clearest way out of conflict is through the lessons of the Book of Genesis, particularly in the stories of sibling tension. Religious fervor is not going to disappear--that's a secularist fantasy, he says. On the contrary, the 21st century shall witness a "de-secularization of society," and instead of regarding the decline of religious faith as the answer to violence, we should return to the sources of faith for solutions. Please join us for this powerful discussion.

Watch the video here: http://www.firstthings.com/media/religious-violence-and-biblical-answers?utm_source=First+Things+Subscribers&utm_campaign=cb70b3038a-First_Things_Interview_with_Rabbi_Sacks11_15_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28bf775c26-cb70b3038a-172542025

New York Times writer David Brooks weighed in on the book with an article, Finding Peace within the Holy Texts. You can read his excellent summary here: http://nyti.ms/1YeoYc9

*****

The Anglican Church of Canada announced that it would use indaba groups for the same-sex blessing vote. Canadian Anglican blogger Samizdat made the following tongue-in-cheek observation:

"The whole idea of the indaba groups is to create a climate of respect during which delegates put on a display of hugging, crying and earnest pondering while, in the background, there are secret machinations to pass the same-sex marriage motion and once again bamboozle the few remaining hapless conservatives still clinging to risible notion that the ACoC bears a passing resemblance to a Christian church."

A press report said this:

"Council of General Synod (CoGS) has stressed that delegates to the 2016 General Synod need space, time, and appropriate preparation in order to keep discussions around same-sex marriage from becoming antagonistic.

"The use of an indaba process or a Sacred Circle type of process is going to create a climate of respect," said Don Wilson, of the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia. "There is a view of some that the revisionists are heretical and the traditionalists are stuck in the past, and if we can get beyond that and into a kind of respect, it could smooth things out." (Indaba is a Zulu word for decision-making by consensus. The Indigenous Sacred Circle often involves the process of talking circles.)

"Though the resolution that brought the issue before General Synod ultimately requires delegates to give either a 'yes' or a 'no,' CoGS has vowed to make the conversation leading up to that vote as non-adversarial as possible."

*****

Episcopal Church Center in New York is renting out space to make money. Episcopal Cafe reports that Bishop Stacy Sauls, Chief Operating Officer of The Episcopal Church, Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, has made a statement regarding tenants of the building at 815 Second Avenue in New York City.

One group that got the heave-ho because it couldn't pay the rent is the Episcopal Church Foundation. It is moving into The Interchurch Center. The 2016--2018 triennial budget, passed by General Convention, mandated that office space at the Episcopal Church Center be rented at market rate in order to maintain the increasingly expensive Manhattan street address.

The Episcopal Church Foundation cited this new cost as their reason for relocating to The Interchurch Center from the Episcopal Church Center.

*****

The Executive Council of The Episcopal Church met this past week at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. You can read my report in today's digest. Much to their annoyance, they discovered the three day event was being bugged. Officers of Executive Council made the unsettling discovery before their morning session on Wednesday: a hidden audio recorder.

The Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe, executive secretary of General Convention, announced the discovery as the council came to order. "We discovered this morning a tape-recording device that had been concealed and was running," Barlowe told a shocked room. "Look under your tables to see if anything was taped."

Council members and staffers quickly rose from their chairs, lifted tablecloths, and searched under tables to see if any other recorders were planted in the meeting room. They found none and the meeting continued.

Around 9:30 a.m., the council went into executive session to discuss both staff issues and Haiti. Non-members left the room. Staff members closed the door to the meeting area and instructed everyone who had left the room to move away from the partition and cluster in a far corner of the dining room.

The hidden tape recorder was found on the floor near the lead table, where top church leaders had been seated throughout Executive Council, including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and House of Deputies President Gay Jennings.

Church staff will investigate whether any surveillance cameras may have recorded someone hiding the recorder.

"This has never happened before," said Neva Rae Fox, the church's officer of public affairs. She said the council might discuss whether to take additional precautions.

Fox said the Episcopal Church Center in New York has never been known to be bugged during her nine years on staff. She said the church has no theories on who might have done it and has not decided whether to report the matter to police.

Question: Who would possibly want to bug a church that is dying and has passed all the hot button issues at various General Conventions? What is there left to bug, pray tell? The color of Curry's socks?

*****

Liberal Protestant seminaries are on the ropes in America. Richard Ostling, former TIME correspondent, writes that it is closing time for Andover Newton Theological School, the oldest U.S. institution for graduate-level clergy training, which has a 208-year history. It announced it is no longer "financially sustainable" due to falling enrollment and must sell its leafy 23-acre campus outside Boston.

This carries high symbolism for "mainline" Protestantism, which for centuries exercised such broad influence over U.S. faith and culture, writes Ostling.

"The school, which has 'historic' links with the United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches, plans two more years of operation while it ponders two radical proposals: either relocate and merge within a larger institution (preliminary talks are under way with Yale's Divinity School) or else switch to ministry apprenticeships with basic coursework but no full-service residential campus."

Based on an interview with Daniel Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools, MacDonald says this and seminary trauma elsewhere is "the fallout from decades of declining membership numbers in mainline denominations," noting that their seminary enrollments have dropped 24 percent since 2005.

At Andover Newton, enrollment totalled 271 students in the last A.T.S. report. Only 40 percent were full-time and only 25 percent lived on campus, compared with the 450 full-time students a generation ago. Enrollment is 63 percent female, and the average student age is 49.

The school requires no creed of the faculty and instead defines itself doctrinally by "core values" like integrity, innovation, openness, understanding, academic freedom and the sustainability of creation. The school emphasizes "multifaith education," and 10 percent of its students are non-Christians (variously identified as Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, Muslim, Baha'i, agnostic or atheist). Andover Newton points to its recognition from the liberal Religious Institute as "sexually healthy and responsible," and welcomes "our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning students."

By contrast, another Protestant school based in the Boston suburbs, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is thriving, with a student head count of 2,067, including satellite campuses. This seminary was founded in 1969 through a two-way merger and purchase of a former Catholic seminary. It's resolutely conservative, with a statement of faith that defines the Bible as "free from error" and a campus code that upholds traditional Christian doctrines on sexual morality.

Among the nation's major Protestant seminaries, the Southern Baptist Convention operates a sizable network. Then there's an archipelago of interdenominational, evangelical seminaries, many of them younger than the "mainline" schools. The largest besides Gordon-Conwell, measured by enrollment, are Asbury (1,467), Dallas (2,084), Fuller (3,258), Reformed (1,082, with its 8th satellite campus opening in New York City next September), Talbot (1,105), and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1,170). Sample enrollments for some prominent interdenominational seminaries known for their liberalism are as follows: Chicago (324), Harvard (336), Union (232), Vanderbilt (233), and Yale (412).

This should be a wake-up call for the Episcopal Church. Nearly all 11 of its seminaries are on the ropes financially and are losing students. The exception to this is Nashotah House, an Anglo-Catholic institution, and the evangelical Trinity School for Ministry (TSM). Both of these schools are thriving. By contrast, General Theological Seminary in NYC is in turmoil with few students and is selling off properties to stay afloat. There was a huge uproar a year ago with faculty threatening to resign. Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA had a lesbian president running the school for a while, but she is gone now. The school is sustained by property sell offs.

Just last week the Board of Directors of Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation (BSSF) announced that beginning with the Fall 2016 term, the seminary will operate all programs--Anglican Studies, Master of Divinity, Doctor of Ministry, and Lifelong Learning--from one site in Chicago. The seminary will split from its partnership with Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio following a collaboration that began in 1999.

Liberals will argue that that the old model of a full-time residential seminary is becoming unsustainable and lays too much debt on graduates who may become only part-time pastors. To save money and time, many schools today offer "distance learning" via computer.

But that's only half the story. The real story is the failure of Protestant liberalism, which has been slowly going bankrupt over the last few decades. This failure is now climaxing with the closing of seminaries, churches and more.

American Protestant Christianity was led over the cliff by Walter Rauschenbusch (1861--1918), who taught at Rochester Theological Seminary. Rauschenbusch was a key figure in the Social Gospel and "Single Tax" movements that flourished in the US during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In seminary he imbibed Higher Criticism, which led to a refutation of the inerrancy of the Bible, substitutionary atonement. In his words, "[substitutionary atonement] was not taught by Jesus; it makes salvation dependent upon a Trinitarian transaction that is remote from human experience; and it implies a concept of divine justice that is repugnant to human sensitivity." He was wrong of course, dead wrong, but his legacy is playing out in the US today with disastrous consequences. Liberal seminaries are dying as conservative ones are growing. While conservative seminaries are labeled homophobic, uninclusive and more and get beaten up by the secular media, they are quietly winning the culture wars. It may take another generation of refuting political correctness to get there, but God has plenty of time, even if we don't.

Most of the Anglican seminaries and theological colleges in the UK are orthodox in faith and morals, and while the CofE looks to be dying, the next generation of seminary graduates might prove us all wrong. A revival could be coming, but it won't come from the liberals and homosexualists.

TEC is dying and so are its seminaries, and well they should. But God has raised up the ACNA and a new day has dawned. Stay tuned.

*****

Please consider a tax deductible donation to support our ministry. We really do depend on you, our readers, to keep us going. We do not receive corporate grants or foundation money. If you visit the website regularly (and thousands of you do daily) then please consider a gift for those of us who write and bring you the news.

You can send a tax-deductible check to:

VIRTUEONLINE
570 Twin Lakes Rd
P.O. Box 111
Shohola, PA 18458

Or you can make a contribution through VOL's PAYPAL link here: http://www.virtueonline.org/support-vol/

Thank you for your support.

In Christ,

David