doctrine

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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.'"

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Looking through the lens of history, the 2023 Asbury revival is 'deja vu' all over again

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Looking through the lens of history, the 2023 Asbury revival is 'deja vu' all over again

The atmosphere in Hughes auditorium was electric as Asbury students -- many in tears -- streamed to the altar to pray, while worshippers sang hymns, mixed with Bible readings, testimonies and public prayers of repentance.

Administrators cancelled classes, grasping that this ordinary chapel service was the start of something bigger -- a 144-hour wave of worship that drew thousands to Wilmore, Kentucky, while similar revivals began on other Christian and secular campuses across the nation.

The year was 1970.

Then again, revivals rocked Asbury College -- now a liberal-arts university -- in 1908, 1921, 1950, 1958 and on other occasions. Historians will now add 2023.

The revival that began on February 8 is "like deja vu all over again," said Stephen A. Seamands, who was a senior in 1970 and returned to teach for nearly 40 years at Asbury Theological Seminary.

"The wildness of these events is that they're actually un-wild. The atmosphere is serene, deep and at times rather quiet," he said. "It's like a veil is pulled back and students see Jesus for the first time -- Jesus manifested in a new and powerful way."

Outsiders may assume that this two-week revival "is over," after Asbury leaders announced that services would be moved off campus, with students moving toward a regular academic and chapel schedule. At one point, as many as 20,000 people had flocked to central Kentucky.

"Never in my life will I forget this," said Asbury University President Kevin J. Brown, in a public statement. "Never in my life have I been so proud to say that I am a part of Asbury University. I write this with tears. The people here are so special."

Seamands said it "will take 30 years or so" to discern what happened. Revivals, he explained, begin with an awakening inside a Christian community -- that's stage one. True revivals, throughout history, have led to evangelism, missions and "efforts for social justice" at the national and global levels.

"It's also clear that this Asbury revival is about Gen Z and its hunger for genuine worship," said Seamands, referring to Americans born in the Internet age.

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Pope Francis and a liberal U.S. cardinal spark more debates about doctrine, LGBTQ issues

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Pope Francis and a liberal U.S. cardinal spark more debates about doctrine, LGBTQ issues

When popes talk about sex, it tends to make headlines.

This was certainly true when Pope Francis told the Associated Press, "Being homosexual isn't a crime." He said the Catholic Church opposes criminalizing homosexuality and that, "We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are." The pope then noted that homosexual activity is "not a crime. Yes, but it's a sin."

The pope immediately responded to questions from Outreach.faith, a website serving LGBTQ Catholics. Francis explained: "I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin. … This is to speak of 'the matter' of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin."

The timing was striking since the AP interview ran on January 25 -- one day after the Jesuit magazine America published a controversial essay by Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego, who Pope Francis selected as a cardinal last year.

"It is a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities," concluded McElroy. "The church's primary witness in the face of this bigotry must be one of embrace rather than distance or condemnation. The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not."

The cardinal linked this "pastoral" approach to another hot-button issue -- offering Holy Communion to Catholics divorced and remarried outside the church. Previously, he had claimed that the "Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare" by bishops attempting to withhold Communion from Catholic politicians who publicly promote abortion rights.

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Standing on the shoulders of giants: Urban pastor wrestles with his backwoods family roots

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Standing on the shoulders of giants: Urban pastor wrestles with his backwoods family roots

Growing up in West Virginia, the Rev. Michael Clary always wondered about some of the archaic language his elders used, words like "yonder" and "reckon."

Then he learned that his grandfather -- a steel-mill worker and country preacher -- had memorized the classic King James Bible by listening to tapes during his long drives to the factory. He had a sixth-grade education and, if he couldn't spell something, he could still quote a verse that contained the word and then find it in his Bible.

All that scripture soaked in -- deep. Thus, "I reckon" wasn't just another way to say "probably." It was New Testament language, such as: "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

These Appalachian roots caused pangs of shame during graduate school, said Clary, who leads Christ the King Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Cincinnati.

Soon after that, "I was pastoring a fast growing church in an urban environment, and a spirit of elitism had infected us," he wrote, in a Twitter stream that went viral. "The people we felt free to mock were conservative, uneducated, backwoods fundies. … They lacked the theological sophistication and cultural insight I had acquired while doing campus ministry and studying at seminary."

The bottom line: "I had moved on. I was better than them. I was more learned and cultured. I had 'seen the world' and they hadn't."

Clary said he wrote those "words with tears in my eyes." Reached by telephone, he explained that he was facing the kinds of church tensions that arise while defending traditional doctrines in a flock located a few blocks from the University of Cincinnati. It's hard to be "winsome" -- a buzz word today -- while trying to remain faithful in a bitterly divided culture.

That's precisely why this painful, personal Twitter thread -- republished as one text on several websites in recent weeks -- rang true, noted John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

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Cardinal George Pell had no way to know that he was preaching his final sermon -- ever

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Cardinal George Pell had no way to know that he was preaching his final sermon -- ever

Cardinal George Pell had no way to know, as he rose to preach during a spiritual retreat in southern Italy, that this was his last sermon -- opening with the biblical cry, "Repent, because the Kingdom of God is near."

Catholics should stay focused on truths proclaimed during the reigns of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, he said, at the Shrine of St. Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo.

These popes "were missionaries of the truth. We don't build the truth. We don't have the ability to change the truth. We can only acknowledge the truth, and sometimes the truth isn't all that pretty. Sometimes the truth is disconcerting, difficult," said Pell, three days before his death on January 10, after routine hip surgery.

"These two Popes did not affirm that the teaching of Jesus was conditioned by the time, by the Roman Empire, by the pagans. They did not claim that the essential and central teaching should be updated, radically changed. They didn't say: 'We don't know what Jesus said because there were no tape recorders.' … As for them, and also for us, Jesus remains the way, the truth and the life."

On this day, the burly 6-foot-4 cardinal faced a gathering of Catholic charismatics, not an audience of Vatican power brokers. Nevertheless, this final sermon -- translated from Italian by Inside the Vatican magazine -- touched on themes in his recent writings that fueled raging debates about Pope Francis and the modernization of Catholic doctrines and worship.

In that sermon, Cardinal Pell offered only one nod to Pope Francis, while noting the potential for future popes from Africa, Asia and the Global South. "Today we have a Pope from South America -- praiseworthy and good," he said.

But after Pell's death, Italian journalist Sandro Magister revealed that the Australian cardinal -- using the pseudonym "Demos" -- had written a fierce March memo circulated to members of the College of Cardinals focusing on issues that loom over the next conclave to select a pope.

The Francis pontificate has been "a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe," this memo claimed.

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A lingering Theophany mystery: The 'holy water flowers' that refused to fade

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A lingering Theophany mystery: The 'holy water flowers' that refused to fade

After the Christmas season and before Lent, Orthodox priests have -- for centuries -- rushed to visit church-members' homes to bless them with prayers and splashes of holy water flung about with a foot-long brush or handfuls of basil.

Droplets of blessed water end up on beds and bookshelves, TVs and toys, potted plants and paintings, along with everything else.

"It's a chance to start over," said Father John Karcher of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Portland, Oregon. "We clean out the cobwebs of sin. … Then we make mistakes and muck it all up again. But we do this every year because God doesn't give up on us."

These rites flow out of the Feast of Theophany, which many Orthodox churches in America celebrate on January 6, or on January 19th for those using the ancient Julian calendar year-round. In addition to house blessings and liturgies, Orthodox clergy bless bodies of water -- rivers, lakes and oceans. In some parts of the world this requires man-sized holes cut into ice.

The feast's central message, said Karcher, is that "when Christ was baptized, he went into the waters and the waters didn't cleanse him -- it was the other way around. He blessed the waters and through them all of creation. … It's a beautiful thing. God responds to our prayers that he sanctifies the waters -- again."

In one rite, priests pray that the blessed water will provide "a fountain of incorruption, a gift of sanctification, a loosing of sins, a healing of sicknesses, a destruction of demons" so that worshippers will experience "the cleansing of souls and bodies, for the healing of sufferings, for the sanctification of homes and for every useful purpose."

The mysterious nature of these rites hit home a decade ago when Karcher led St. Innocent Orthodox Church in the Bay Area in northern California.

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The future Pope Benedict XVI was concerned about modern Europe -- for decades

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The future Pope Benedict XVI was concerned about modern Europe -- for decades

In a rite before the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Vatican officials placed unique symbols of his pontificate inside his cypress casket, along with a scroll in Latin describing his ascent to the Chair of St. Peter.

"His faith and family upbringing prepared him for the harsh experience of the problems connected with the Nazi regime, aware of the climate of strong hostility towards the Catholic Church," said the English translation of this "rogito," or deed. "In this complex situation, he discovered the beauty and truth of faith in Christ."

After deserting the German army without firing a shot, Josef Ratzinger began his theology studies and, in 1951, was ordained a priest. He emerged as an intellectual voice preaching hope, as opposed to mere optimism. The future pope's sobering views on modern Europe would affect his entire career -- as well as debates about his legacy when he died.

"This so-called Christian Europe … has become the birthplace of a new paganism, which is growing steadily in the heart of the Church, and threatens to undermine her from within," said Ratzinger, in a 1958 lecture. This modern church "is no longer, as she once was, a Church composed of pagans who have become Christians, but a Church of pagans, who still call themselves Christians."

Four years later, the 35-year-old priest advised Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne during the historic Second Vatican Council, emerging as a "progressive" on reform issues, yet one who saw painful challenges ahead.

"From the crisis of today the church of tomorrow will emerge – a church that has lost much," he warned, on German radio in 1969. "As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members."

Ratzinger envisioned a "more spiritual church" with no political mandate, "flirting as little with the left as with the right. … It will make her poor and cause her to become the church of the meek."

These words grew in importance when he became an archbishop in 1977 and then a cardinal. Later, Pope John Paul II made him prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where his orthodoxy inspired liberals to pin a "God's Rottweiler" label on the bookish, even shy theologian.

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Latest empty tomb, inc., numbers: Do churches still have funds for charity and missions?

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Latest empty tomb, inc., numbers: Do churches still have funds for charity and missions?

Back in the heady church-growth days of the 1980s and 1990s, researchers John and Sylvia Ronsvalle began hearing caution creep into their interviews with church leaders.

Denominational leaders were especially uncomfortable when asked about declines in giving to overseas missions and projects to help the poor.

Sylvia Ronsvalle said the leader of one large congregation gave this blunt response: "Ah! No! We can't promote missions because there won't be enough for our seminaries." She responded: "Well, I think people would be more interested in your seminaries if you were actually impacting global needs in Jesus' name."

That encounter, and many others, ended up in "Behind the Stained Glass Windows: Money Dynamics in the Church," one of many publications the Ronsvalles have produced while leading empty tomb, inc. Their center also serves as a hub for missions in Champaign, Illinois, their home for 50 years.

Danger signs began decades ago. Giving to religious groups -- defined in terms of potential donations based on after-tax incomes -- peaked in 1960 and then began to decline, even as church membership numbers and budgets kept rising.

This trend "pre-dated many of the controversial issues that were to emerge by the end of the 1960s," noted the 31st annual empty tomb report, based on 2019 numbers. In mainline and evangelical denominations "per member giving in current dollars, as well as in inflation-adjusted dollars and as a portion of income" was lower in 2019 than the year before.

Then COVID-19 hit. But the pandemic's impact in pews only made an ongoing charity funding crisis more obvious, said Sylvia Ronsvalle, in a telephone interview.

Membership and worship attendance numbers plummeted in recent decades in mainline churches and are now declining or plateaued in many evangelical groups. Meanwhile, marriage and birth rates keep falling, while the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans -- the so-called "Nones" -- keeps rising.

The result is a survival mindset in which religious leaders focus on the "bottom line," leading to fewer efforts to support mission work of all kinds.

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2022 update: Catholic doctrines on sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven have changed?

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2022 update: Catholic doctrines on sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven have changed?

For centuries, Irish Catholics heard priests deliver sermons about sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven.

Times have changed and an 80-year-old priest in County Kerry didn't get the memo.

"How will people know that God wants to forgive them if we don't tell them?", said Father Sean Sheehy, preaching as a substitute priest at St. Mary's Church, Listowel. "How will people who are lost, be found, if we -- as God's people -- don't call them and say, 'Look, God loves you. He has come to call sinners. But he wants you to have life, and to have it to the full'? …That's what he wants. He wants you to live life to the fullest."

The problem was that Sheehy's October 30 sermon stressed ancient Catholic doctrines on behaviors many modern Catholics refuse to call "sins."

This caused a media storm, including this Irish Times headline: "Fr Sheen Sheehy's Listowel sermon was an uncomfortable reminder of who we really were." Also, Kerry Bishop Ray Browne apologized, after 20-plus parishioners walked out of the rite, and barred Sheehy from saying Mass until the parish priest returns to the altar.

During his sermon, Sheehy fiercely condemned core doctrines of the Sexual Revolution, while defending Catholic teachings on marriage and sex.

"What is so sad today is you rarely hear about sin but it's rampant. It's rampant," he said. "We see it, for example, in the legislation of our governments. We see it in the promotion of abortion. We see it in the example of this lunatic approach of transgenderism. We see it, for example, in the promotion of sex between two men and two women.

"That is sinful, that is mortal sin and people don't seem to realize it. … And we need to listen to God about it -- because if we don't, then there is no hope for those people."