Busola Sodeinde, London, a church commissioner spoke about the impact on the global church and the diaspora here in England, strongly connected with its roots: “There is an arrogance which I recognise, maybe unintended of, one time colonialism which insists that western culture is progressive while dissenting voices in Africa and everywhere else is silenced…I want to address the impending racial injustice, disunity and racial segregation in the church if we were to introduce same sex blessings without further consultation… I am worried that there may be an exodus of diverse communities from our parish churches and of having a profound impact on racial diversity which until now we have tried so hard to encourage.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury replied: “I’m generally torn by this… This isn’t something I take lightly. It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever known…. This 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’ll die; women who’ll be raped; children who’ll be tortured. So, when we vote, we need to think of that”, then adding at the end: “We must also do right here as part of the church Catholic”.

Last week, the Archbishop met around a dozen MPs in Parliament and it was reported that he said he would rather see the Church of England lose its privileged status as the established church of the country than risk the global church fracturing over disagreements on the issue. Lambeth Palace said the conversation was “more nuanced and complex”.

Read it all.

The Church cannot ‘bless’ in God’s name the union of same sex partnered individuals, much less sexual relationships between same-sex persons which in God’s Word He declares to be sinful.

The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in leading the House of Bishops to make the recommendations that undergird the Motion, together with his statements, alongside the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of London leading up to the General Synod, cause the GSFA to question his fitness to lead what is still a largely orthodox world-wide Communion.

In view of these developments, the GSFA will be taking decisive steps towards re-setting the Anglican Communion (as outlined in our ‘Communique’ following the 2022 Lambeth Conference). Orthodox Provinces in GSFA are not leaving the Anglican Communion, but with great sadness must recognise that the Church of England has now joined those Provinces with which communion is impaired. The historical Church which spawned the global Communion, and which for centuries was accorded ‘first among equals’ status, has now triggered a widespread loss of confidence in her leadership of the Communion.

Next Monday the Global South Primates shall meet to consider more fully the decision by the General Synod and shall release a more detailed response in due course.

Read it all.

Approval of the motion allows same-sex couples to go to Anglican churches after a legal marriage ceremony for services including prayers of dedication, thanksgiving and God’s blessing.

The motion had been brought by the Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally, and was the result of six years of work on questions of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage known as Living In Love And Faith.

The final motion was passed across the synod’s three ‘houses’. The House of Bishops voted 36 in favour, four against with two abstentions. The House of Clergy voted 111 in favour, 85 against and 3 abstentions. The House of Laity voted 103 in favour, 92 against, and 5 abstentions.

The bishops will now finalise the wording of the new prayers and also issue new guidance on whether gay clergy must remain celibate before the synod meets again in July.

Read it all.

"No-one has to offer these services and no one will be disadvantaged if they don't"

When Sunday Trading was legalised there were firm assurances that no shop-workers would be compelled to work on Sundays if they had a conscientious objection to doing so.https://t.co/MBbJ45bilo

— thoughtfully catholic (@stevhep) February 9, 2023

Valentyn Lymarenko and his infantry unit have already been seasoned by a year of combat, but they are grunting through exercises in this snowy trench to prepare for the next phase of fighting: a much-anticipated Russian offensive.

“We know they are coming,” Lymarenko said amid the pop of practice rifle fire. “We don’t know where.”

As Moscow struggles to turn the tide of a war that so far has largely failed, Ukrainians are bracing for a Kremlin do-over. But just where Russia will seek to land its blow remains a mystery, forcing Kyiv to ready its troops along a varied and forbidding front stretching from Belarus to the Black Sea.

From boggy northern wetlands to raging street fighting in the east to the treeless southern steppe, each range of terrain presents its own set of challenges and openings for Russian invaders and the Ukrainians intent on expelling them.Read it all.

Russian and Ukrainian forces dig into position for war’s next phase – The Washington Post

https://t.co/MI1MSnhsk2

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) February 9, 2023

From there:

• Cost of living motion brought forward that champions the work of the church in meeting the needs of the crisis and calls on the government for further action. There were also amendments to remove reference to the Ukraine war and to commit the church to take more action for parishes.
• Item 530 relates to the Misc Measure and gives Parishes the ultimate say on land sales during times of vacancy. A win for Save the Parish. A number of other clauses were considered and passed.
• There was discussion about the Parochial Fees Order. Reductions in fees for weddings and funerals passed in light of the cost of living crisis.
• LLF debate got underway. Was very well humoured considering the nature of the topic. A number of amendments tabled and all failed to pass.

A round up of the day's events https://t.co/tDjmparaZu #synod #generalsynod

— General Synod News (@synodnews) February 8, 2023

Some while ago, I picked up a book in a second hand bookshop. It was an old, slightly faded paperback with what looked like an intriguing title: The God I Want. Published in the late 1960s, it was a collection of essays by various public figures explaining the kind of God they could cope with, the God they could bring themselves to believe in.

None of them said they wanted a crucified God. The cross of Jesus simply bars the way to that approach by confronting us with something that so offends common sense that it makes us start back at square one. It directs us, at the start of our search for God to a scene which tells of the absence of God, the strange and counter-intuitive wisdom of God.

It tells us that if we are to find the true God, we need to give up our ideas of what God should be like and sit and listen for a while. It tells us that the journey to find God starts, not with human wisdom, human chattering and speculation on what kind of God we might like, what kind of God we can get our heads around, what kind of God we cm bring ourselves to believe in, but instead, we should stop talking, just for once. The journey to God begins in silence, not speculation.

–Graham Tomlin, Looking Through the Cross: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2014 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp.27-28

No 10 has announced that the Revd Dr Graham Tomlin will be the next Bishop of Kensington http://t.co/UJNJQklZ0a pic.twitter.com/oNMhYLgKhX

— London Diocese (@dioceseoflondon) July 2, 2015

O Almighty God, we pray thee, sow the seed of thy Word in our hearts, and send down upon us thy heavenly grace; that we may bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, and at the great day of harvest may be gathered by thy holy angels into thy garner; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

–2 Timothy 2:15

During his recent visit to Charleston for the Mere Anglicanism conference, Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) Archbishop Foley Beach preached at the invitation of the St. John’s congregation.

The decision of Archbishop Beach – who presumably would be welcome in the pulpit of any of the three dozen Charleston-area ACNA parishes – to preach at St. John’s Parish Church signaled care for and support of those who had lost properties.

“It was an incredible encouragement to have the Archbishop with us. We are humbled he chose to be with us,” St. John’s Rector Jeremy Shelton shared with me in an interview this week. “It’s been six months for us now and it has been an incredible blessing. It is difficult, for sure. But God is faithful and our congregation is growing in size, faithfulness, and unity. The Gospel speaks much louder than anything else.”

Shelton, who became St. John’s Rector at the time of the property handover, explained that the invitation for Beach to preach came about after a parish staff member suggested it. The Archbishop’s office circled back within a month, suggesting the weekend of January 29.

Johns Island is a formerly rural community that has quickly become a Charleston suburb. The fourth largest island on the United States’ East Coast, it now has a population nearing 30,000, a growth rate of 114 percent since 2000. Named for Saint John Parish in Barbados by the first English colonial settlers, there is a long history of Anglican worship on the island, with St. Johns Parish Church founded in 1734.

“Our neighbors are from Minnesota, New York, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania,” Shelton, who hails from Kentucky but has lived in South Carolina for nearly 20 years, tells me of his own residential subdivision on the island. “They are coming from everywhere.”

Read it all.

Of the eight @anglican_sc parishes ruled by the South Carolina State Supreme Court to lose control of their properties to the Episcopal Church, several are now in new homes and are thriving. #anglican https://t.co/XSzx7N61tJ

— Jeff Walton (@jeffreyhwalton) February 8, 2023

I know there is fear of a slippery slope, of what may or may not happen at some point in the future, but let us not give in to the fear of a future which we can neither predict nor control. Fear leads us to do the wrong things – trying to secure the future for God tomorrow, rather than trusting the Holy Spirit today.

I have just been in Westminster Hall hearing President Zelensky, who knows well what it means for the world to change overnight. And who knows here what will come to us over the next few years, not least from there.

Each of us will answer to God at the judgement for our decisions on this matter. We are personally responsible. I am supporting these resources, not I think because I am controlled by culture but because of scripture, tradition and reason evidenced in the vast work done over the last six years so ably by so many.

I may be wrong, of course I may, but I cannot duck the issue any more than anyone else here. I ask each member of Synod to vote with their Spirit-inspired consciences, scripturally and spiritually guided, and not because groups or lobbies or outsiders have told you to. I have heard them over the last two weeks in Parliament, and been told exactly what to do. I am not doing any of it.

Read it all.

I’m supporting the Prayers of Love and Faith, not because I am controlled by culture, but because of scripture, tradition and reason evidenced in the vast work done over the last six years so ably by so many. #Synodhttps://t.co/DMHSFntJ3D

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) February 8, 2023

NBC: “Only a fraction of the nation’s educators are Black men, pushing four Philadelphia teachers to work together in a school that serves Black male students. The goal: to provide an image that’s more than academic. NBC News’ Rehema Ellis spoke with them about how their students motivate them.”

Watch it all.

From there:

• Item 510 – Diocesan Boards of Education Measure 2021 (consequential amendment to regulations under Canon B12) which surrounds the administration of Holy Communion in church schools. This relates simply to updating the definitions of headteacher and church school.  Read more.
• Key misc issues
• Issues raised about insecurity around immediate termination of BMOs (Bishop’s Mission Order)
• Clive Scowen seeked to ensure for Artice 7 & 8 business has a two thirds majority of delegates in person to ensure robust debate on the most important issues.
• The Archbishop of Canterbury gave the loyal address. Read more.
• There was a further time of questions focused entirely on LLF. Read more. Questions focused around the details of the new prayers and proposed changes.
• Resourcing Ministerial Formations takes forward proposals discussed in July. Some concerns were raised about the need for transitional arrangements and the use of the tuition formula. Item 9 was passed.

Catch up on yesterday's business at #synod #generalsynodhttps://t.co/rIf5ZLy7zd

— General Synod News (@synodnews) February 8, 2023

O God of Love, thou didst deliver servant Josephine Margaret Bakhita from the bondage of slavery to serve you in true freedom; by her example help us to see those enslaved among us, and work to release them from their chains. In your mercy, give to all survivors healing from their wounds and joy in their liberation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Bakhita (Josephine Margaret Bakhita), Monastic, 1947

Abducted+sold into slavery as a child in Sudan, Bakhita later gained her freedom & in 1896 became a Canossian religious sister, from 1902 at a convent in Schio. She was canonised in 2000 pic.twitter.com/tkjyUFTnq9

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) February 8, 2023

O God, who hast sown in our hearts the precious seed of thy truth: Grant us to nourish it by meditation, prayer and obedience, that it may not only take root, but also bring forth fruit unto holiness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Red sky in the morning…

Our view looking towards Sumburgh Head and lighthouse, #Shetland at dawn this morning.@StormHour @ThePhotoHour pic.twitter.com/cVCE1XKbt6

— Hugh Harrop Wildlife (@HughHarrop) February 8, 2023

I do not turn aside from thy ordinances,
for thou hast taught me.
How sweet are thy words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through thy precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
Thy word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.

–Psalm 119:102-105

sunrise today stunning 🔥😎🔥 pic.twitter.com/ZYJ7iAzCVH

— graham ross (@grahamr27165817) February 8, 2023

We are called as Christians to be gathered in the Spirit and to show in the life of the Church of England a passionate love for every person, a profound commitment to the proclamation of Christ, a powerful symbol that culture war and crisis is not the way the world must go: God shows a better, a saving way.

Just as God has spoken in His word, God speaks to us today, in a language that our hurting hearts understand. It’s a language that gives us a new identity, made in the image of God. God gathers out of a physically and ideologically scattered people a church which acts in unity for those who are different, and does it with unquestioning love.

A common identity, those who are saved, a common tongue, speaking Christian, together offer a common community. To those driven into doubt, or disbelief by the raucous hammering at each other in all our churches around the world – not just Anglican, I know what it feels like to have some raucous hammering – which seems to reject people for their sexual identity or their ethnicity, or their gender, or their youth, or their age or their character or their past or their potential future – we must say; “God himself has come for you. God himself cannot bear to be apart from you, he binds himself to you. He invites you to participate in his divine life and he sets you in his church where all, all have a cherished and essential place.”

That is the good news we carry. Whoever we meet, they are loved by God freely and completely. We may say it, we must live it and how we do that is one of the great tests of these times of societal, national and international division. For we live today in a time of war physical, and war cultural. We too easily import culture wars and lapse into their language. It is the sea we swim in. We do not need to drink it.

Read it all.

The Bishops in the Church of England wrote and issued a paper whereby they intend to introduce same-sex blessings services. They are not proposing same-sex weddings (at this stage), but wantng same sex blessing ceremonies. In other words, this change amounts to formally recognising same-sex relationships as a moral and God accepted good and that churches ought to offer services of prayer and blessing for these couples. Not every bishop agrees with the document, but clearly, there is sufficient consensus for its publication and presentation to General Synod for serious consideration.

In what can only be described as a dishonest riff, some Anglican leaders are insisting that the church’s doctrine on marriage isn’t changing…quite literally as they call for changes to the church’s understanding of sex and marriage. The same hypocrisy is being offered up by The Australian Law Reform Commission, albeit a legal entourage rather than a church one. Their recent submission to the Federal Government calls for religious schools to lose their freedom to practice traditional views of sexuality. For example, they are recommending legislation that allows Christian schools to teach a Christian view of sex and marriage, but they may also be required to teach alternate views. They will lose the right to employ staff on the basis of religious convictions. In other words, we’ll tolerate your religion so long as you tell and permit today’s sexology. That’s not compromise, it’s forced capitulation. That’s not co-existing with two unbridgeable views, that’s crossing over and demanding change.

This General Synod is happening on the other side of the world and in a Christian denomination that is different to my own, so why take interest in this debate? This particular case is important for several reasons: 1. I have many friends who pastor or who are members of churches in the Church of England. 2. The very public stature of this denomination (part through age and part through connections to the State) will garner significant media and public attention. 3. The Church of England is part of the worldwide Anglican communion which accounts for 10s million of believers, including Australia. 4. The same revisionist agenda playing out in the Church of England is present here in Australia, including among Baptists.

The flavour of the month is self-expression. In every sphere of life we are told that autonomy and self determination is an absolute, and questioning this ‘reality’ is the gravest of sins. From TikTok to the Bishop of York, the sermon proclaims that an individual’s sexual preferences and gender identity is the most fundamental aspect of reality…with a dash of God apparently giving approval. While this religious message will arouse a clap from the culture’s elites, notice how it doesn’t bring people to the cross or persuade them to follow Jesus and join a local church. What’s the point of Christianity if it does little more than mirror the culture’s messaging?

Read it all.

The real point of all this is that the Church of England is now to bless same-sex unions in clear defiance of both the Bible and the tradition of the Christian church. It will do so even as many of the more conservative churches in the Anglican Communion threaten to break from Canterbury. It will do so even as those identified as LGBTQIA+ in the bishops’ statement are outraged that the church is so tepid. It will do so even after evangelicals rightly call the move outright rebellion against the Word of God.

Anglicans pride themselves on their traditional via media, or way between. They were born in an effort, at least by some, to find a third way between Protestantism and Catholicism. They are proud of their supposed openness to both believers who hold to historic Christian doctrines and heretics who deny them. Now that the sexual revolutionaries are in control of the society and ready to bare their teeth against any who resist, the bishops of the Church of England reveal themselves to be toothless tigers who hold to an imaginary third way between biblical Christianity and the ideologues of the sexual and gender revolutions.

In the Book of Common Prayer’s rite for the consecration of a bishop, the candidate is required to pledge fidelity to the Bible. Then they are asked this: “Will you then faithfully exercise yourself in the same Holy Scriptures, and call upon God by prayer, for the true understanding of the same; so as ye may be able by them to teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine, and to withstand and convince the gainsayers?”

Now, the bishops of the Church of England are the gainsayers. If you bless same-sex unions, you are buying the entire package demanded by the moral revolutionaries. This isn’t a third way. This is just old-fashioned surrender. You bless same-sex unions, dear bishops, and you just bought them.

Read it all.

Americans are more likely to predict negative rather than positive outcomes for five key aspects of the U.S. economy over the next six months. Higher inflation, unemployment and interest rates, as well as reduced economic growth and stock market values, are all expected.

A majority of U.S. adults (67%) expect inflation to rise, although more (79%) predicted that it would last year. At the same time, the public’s outlook for unemployment and the stock market have become more pessimistic and are now negative on balance. Expectations for economic growth and the stock market are the most pessimistic in Gallup’s periodic trend.

Gallup first asked Americans in October 2001 what they expected would happen with these five aspects of the economy and updated them monthly until 2006. Since then, Gallup has asked about them eight times, though not during the late 2007-early 2009 Great Recession. The latest results are from the Jan. 2-22 Mood of the Nation poll, which also found that Americans’ confidence in the economy remains low, mentions of inflation as the nation’s most important problem are still elevated and perceptions of the job market are positive but weakened compared with a year ago.

Read it all.

Americans are more likely to predict worsening rather than improving conditions for five economic aspects, including inflation, unemployment, economic growth, the stock market and interest rates. https://t.co/xsV2WlFSyE

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) February 6, 2023

We do, of course, not live in an heroic age, an age of burning faith, martyrdom and devotion. Rather we live in the great era of spiritual apathy and indifference, interspliced with mad bursts of quasi-religious progressive fanaticism; of mechanism, materialism and utilitarianism; within the church, of the meticulous, supine management of a decay and decline that is seen as inevitable. Given that, it should probably come as no surprise that the sort of bishops we produce are not quite of the nature of Athanasius, Chrysostom or Becket, and are rather more likely to remind us of the deputy regional manager of a chain of supermarkets. Perhaps in some respects that is a good thing: such formidable men were the products of ages more violent, more turbulent and a good deal less comfortable and ‘safe’ than our own. Personally, they were probably incredibly difficult and alarming individuals. If Chrysostom were transplanted to the 21st century, one struggles to see him being offered a column in the Church Times or becoming a regular on ‘Thought for the Day’. He might make us all a bit too uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, it is surely the case that in this kind of shuffling, pusillanimous era we need uncompromising messengers of Gospel truth and orthodoxy, heroic conveyors of inconvenient moral verities, and fiery prophetic voices of doom crying in the wilderness more than ever. Surrender to the secular languages of ‘change management’ and MBA-style jargon, attempting to adapt the spirit of Taylorism and human resource departments to produce spiritual time-and-motion studies, will not make the Church more ‘effective’ or ‘productive’ (whatever that would mean) – it simply reduces its extraordinary, transcendental, urgent message to the level of the quotidian, the utilitarian, the banal. Not only that, but the grasping, instrumentalising spirit of technocracy and managerialism is actively contrary to the spirit of the gospel, which rejects every easy commercial assumption, every sophistical calculation of profit-and-loss, every piece of instrumental rationalisation. We should sell everything we own to possess one pearl and one pearl alone, that of Heaven.

What we need, therefore, are some bishops who defy this spirit, who refuse to conform to the Weberian spirit of the new church bureaucrats, who rattle against the iron cage that Welbyism is creating. The Bishops only emerge from their bureaucratic fortresses nowadays to issue vague, theologically undernourished moral pronouncements on subjects where they know their viewpoint will find approval from their liberal masters. This is not good enough.

Read it all.

Deliver us, O God, from injustice, envy, hatred and malice; give us grace to pardon all who have offended us, and to bear with one another even as thou, Lord, dost bear with us, in thy patience and great loving-kindness.

Today’s cold and cloudy sunrise at Cape Cod National Seashore! Coast Guard beach. #eastham #capecod #StormHour #sunrise pic.twitter.com/Q95sNbKTAF

— Darius Aniunas (@dariusaniunas) February 7, 2023

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience, as did my fathers, when I remember you constantly in my prayers. As I remember your tears, I long night and day to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lo”²is and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you. Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.

–2 Timothy 1:1-7

Brrr!! Cold start to the day White mill bridge #Dorset pic.twitter.com/1FAHiPvWO9

— (@Matt_Pinner) February 7, 2023

Collins…married Diana Kimpton, an actress, in 1955. They had met at a London rally held by the American evangelist Billy Graham. She would put on drama productions in church, as Collins moved away from traditional pulpit preaching, and also train Collins’s curates in public speaking. She died in 2013. He is survived by their children, Dominic and Richenda.
From 1971 Collins served at the semi-rural parish of Canford Magna in Dorset, but led regular missions to London, including the “Leap Step Forward” campaign at HTB, which planted the seeds of its rebirth as a Charismatic evangelical church.

Collins invented what he called the “evangelistic supper party” at which members of his community were encouraged to overcome their qualms, invite friends to dinner and hold discussions about the meaning of life over a glass of wine. It became a highly effective method of evangelising to the chattering classes of Kensington and its affluent surrounds. The suppers were a vital part of the introduction to Christianity course, Alpha, which had been launched at HTB in 1977 and would grow into a global phenomenon.

When he was due to leave HTB in 1985, he made the unusual step for a senior clergyman of staying on for five years as an assistant curate to ensure continuity of mission, while graciously ceding authority to the new vicar, Sandy Miller. At the same time he served as area dean of Chelsea and Prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral. After Collins’s retirement in 1990, his work would be continued by Nicky and Pippa Gumbel.

He continued to study the Bible in Greek. Aptly, his favourite verse remained “Rejoice in the Lord Always” (Philippians, iv, 4). Ironically, for a man some deemed responsible for tambourines in church, Collins was an accomplished classical organist who played every day until the end of his life.

Read it all (subscription).

The Rev John Collins obituaryhttps://t.co/gZ31j5v9OV

— Nicky Gumbel (@nickygumbel) February 4, 2023

The Sermon on the Mount describes what human life and human community look like when they come under the gracious rule of God. And what do they look like? Different! Jesus emphasized that his true followers, the citizens of God’s kingdom, were to be entirely different from others. They were not to take their cue from the people around them, but
from him, and so prove to be genuine children of their heavenly Father. To me the key text of the Sermon on the Mount is Matthew 6:8: “Do not be like them.” It is immediately reminiscent of God’s word to Israel in Leviticus 18:3: “You must not do as they do.” It is the same call to be different. And right through the Sermon on the Mount this theme is elaborated.

–cited by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

On what would've been John R. W. Stott's 98th birthday, we celebrate his legacy by reviewing what he saw as Christianity's eight essential claims.

LEARN MORE:https://t.co/AUEef5BDJY pic.twitter.com/8FoUvUbBL5

— Eerdmans Publishing (@eerdmansbooks) April 29, 2019

Listen to it all (download option is there as well).

In the Gospel, Jesus is talking to us: “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.” Each one of us is called to be “salt” and “light.” pic.twitter.com/9Zeb6Cwq3x

— Abp. José H. Gomez (@ArchbishopGomez) February 5, 2023

Today our society is suffering from an epidemic of self-harm, culminating in the most final form of suffering on this earth—in “deaths of despair.”

These deaths speak to the harm inflicted on oneself through overdosing, suicide, or health issues from alcoholism. They manifest despair as a way of coping (or trying to end) one’s suffering of physical or mental pain.

A new study makes the case that a loss of religion has played a significant part in this rise. This does not necessarily entail atheism, as many of these people may continue to believe in God or some other kind of spirituality. Rather, it involves no longer participating in organized religion within a faith community.

Previous research has shown that men and women who regularly attended religious services at least once a week were less likely to die of despair. Which means, as Tyler VanderWeele and Brendan Case point out in a CT article, “Empty pews are an American public health crisis.”

The individualization of religion and the isolation of its experience are two factors contributing to this trend. We live in times of great confusion regarding how God created us—and among the lies we struggle with is believing that community is something we can take or leave.

Read it all.

I've got another piece up this morning with @CTmagazine. Thankful they were willing to look at my deeper dive into how the church is needed in combating deaths of despair:

People Perish for Lack of Religion https://t.co/YPjcLWOOv7 via @CTMagazine

— Adam M. Carrington (@carringtonam) February 6, 2023

Here’s something odd: We’re getting worse at construction. Think of the technology we have today that we didn’t in the 1970s. The new generations of power tools and computer modeling and teleconferencing and advanced machinery and prefab materials and global shipping. You’d think we could build much more, much faster, for less money, than in the past. But we can’t. Or, at least, we don’t.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, productivity in the construction sector — how much more could be done given the same number of workers and machines and land — grew faster than productivity in the rest of the economy. Then, around 1970, it began to fall, even as economywide productivity kept rising. Today, the divergence is truly wild. A construction worker in 2020 produced less than a construction worker in 1970, at least according to the official statistics. Contrast that with the economy overall, where labor productivity rose by 290 percent between 1950 and 2020, or to the manufacturing sector, which saw a stunning ninefold increase in productivity.

In the piquantly titled “The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the U.S. Construction Sector,” Austan Goolsbee, the newly appointed president of the Chicago Federal Reserve and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, under President Barack Obama, and Chad Syverson, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, set out to uncover whether this is all just a trick of statistics, and if not, what has gone wrong.

Read it all.

A Really Good Piece: The Story Construction Tells About America’s Economy Is Disturbing https://t.co/4BEMy8ScKA

— Francis Fukuyama (@FukuyamaFrancis) February 6, 2023

Lord, because being compassed with infirmities we oftentimes sin and ask for pardon: Help us to forgive as we would be forgiven; neither mentioning old offences committed against us, nor dwelling upon them in thought, nor being influenced by them in heart; but loving our brother freely, as thou freely lovest us; for Christ’s sake.

A closer up one of this mornings beautiful sky above Glastonbury Tor. pic.twitter.com/Su3I1fwdGA

— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) February 6, 2023

See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who receive circumcision do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh. But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God.

Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen.

–Galatians 6:11-18

pic.twitter.com/fAKpLtF2Hk

— The Whitby Photographer (@WhitbyPhotos) February 6, 2023