Gafcon Australia exists to promote the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ through the Anglican Church of Australia. We are convinced that the fullness of life that only Jesus gives is experienced through hearing, trusting and obeying his word of grace and life, in the power of his Spirit and the fellowship of his people. For this reason, the Board of Gafcon Australia expresses its deep regret that the recent majority opinion of the Appellate Tribunal of the Anglican Church of Australia relies upon a disputed definition of the meaning of ‘doctrine’ rather than on a whole-hearted and glad embrace of the life-giving Word of God. In doing so, they have seriously undermined the basis of national unity in our church. We regard their conclusions as erroneous and unconvincing.

A majority of the Appellate Tribunal affirmed that certain legislation passed by two Australian Dioceses was ‘not inconsistent with the Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Constitution’. In doing so, the Appellate Tribunal declined to follow advice they had requested from two other Australian Anglican bodies – the House of Bishops and the Board of Assessors. Both of these bodies unanimously affirmed the historic and biblical teaching on personal sexual ethics. The General Synod will respond to the opinion at its meeting in May/June next year. It is possible, indeed likely, that in the meantime some Dioceses will take steps to authorise their own services of blessing of same-sex marriages in the near future.

Around the Anglican Communion where developments of this kind have occurred (notably, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Scotland) orthodox Anglicans have found themselves ostracised or isolated from their own Dioceses and Bishops.

Gafcon Australia assures Anglicans who affirm the Scriptures as ‘the ultimate rule and standard of faith given by inspiration of God and containing all things necessary for salvation’ (to quote the Constitution) that we will support and assist you in maintaining a faithful Anglican witness.

Read it all.

“Erroneous and Unconvincing”. GAFCON Australia responds to Appellate Tribunal Opinion https://t.co/rPj5hLMMl1

— David Ould ن (@davidould) November 17, 2020

Make sure to listen all the way to the end, where Steve talks about his experience of having Covid19 and recovering from it and what it taught him theologically.

It is with great sadness that I note the opinion of the Appellate Tribunal of the Anglican Church of Australia on the matter of proposed services to bless same-sex unions. Setting aside the unanimous advice of the House of Bishops and the unanimous advice of the Board of Assessors, the majority of the Tribunal has decided that there is no impediment to such services of blessing going ahead.

This opinion, if acted upon, may indeed have devastating consequences for the Anglican Church of Australia, as similar decisions have done elsewhere in the world, but it cannot change the revealed will of God. The opinion is deeply wrong because it opens the door for the blessing of behaviour which the Bible clearly says will exclude people from inheriting the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10). As the Board of Assessors and the House of Bishops made clear, the prohibition of this behaviour is not limited to an isolated passage in the New Testament but is consistent through the entire Bible. God does not change his mind. He does not need to. He has always known the end from the beginning.

Since its release, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Archbishop Geoff Smith, has described the decision of the Tribunal as ‘an important contribution to the ongoing conversation within the church’. He clearly does not see it as the final word. It is important that only Scripture occupies that place.

Read it all.

You can find the ruling at the top of the page here. You may find the ruling itself in a 123 page pdf there. It is a lot to digest.

The Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith teaching and learning resources, exploring questions of human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage, have been published today.

The extensive resources draw together the bible, theology, science and history with real-life stories. They were commissioned by the House of Bishops and include a book, a series of films and podcasts and a course following three years’ work by a group of more than 40 people from across the Church.

They are intended to initiate a process of whole Church learning and engagement in 2021, within a clear timeframe, that will contribute to the Bishops’ discernment of a way forward in relation to questions of human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.

Read it all (and yes you have to look through it all; the book is 480 pages (!)).

In What Is Marriage, we opposed a “consent-based” view of marriage that saw marriage as being primarily about companionship, establishing a companionate relationship with what one scholar called “your number one person.” We argued that a faulty understanding of marriage actually makes it harder for people to find happiness, both inside and outside of marriage. That a vision of marriage that sees it as just about whatever ordinary friendships and relationships have, but taken to the n^th degree—that marriage is simply the best, most important of whatever makes human sociality good to begin with—gets marriage wrong in ways that can harm both married and unmarried people.

For married people it can make them presume that their marriage is to be their primary means of fulfillment in all the areas of their life, that they should be able to say of their spouse “you fulfill me.” But no one human being and relationship totally fulfills any of us. And no one should seek total fulfillment from their spouses or their marriage.

For unmarried people, it can make them feel—and the rest of society view them—as not only lacking one aspect of fulfillment, marriage itself, but as lacking the pinnacle of human fulfillment, and thus as not flourishing at all. A vision of marriage that sees the relationship between spouses as the peak of human sociality in turn renders the unmarried as second-class flourishers.

Instead, we should view marriage correctly, as a distinctive good with a distinctive nature: a conjugal union of husband and wife ordered to, and thus normatively shaped by its unique aptness for, the bearing and rearing of children. Doing so not only allows us to see family as involving much more than just the spouses themselves—to include extended family and friends grafted into the family—but also allows us to appreciate the unique and irreducible goodness of non-marital forms of human sociality.

A sound vision of marriage thus offers wide vistas of human fulfillment to people who may never marry, for whatever reason. It offers hope of meaningful non-sexual relationships to people who experience same-sex attraction in a way that makes forming a truly marital partnership impossible.

More deeply understanding the truth about marriage and human sexuality will help all of us flourish. And that, of course, is what a pastor like Pope Francis desires. We can understand—indeed we share—the frustration of our fellow Catholics with the ways in which the Holy Father conducts interviews and the ways in which the media distorts them, but we must not do anything to undermine the truth that sets us free.

Read it all.

Pope Francis has consistently taught the truth about marriage: it is and can only be between one man and one woman. The deceptively edited remarks that recently made waves must be viewed within the whole of the Catholic Church's tradition. https://t.co/yiYc0t2cpK

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) October 28, 2020

The Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and I, the Rt. Rev. William H. Love, Bishop of Albany voluntarily entered into an Accord which became effective October 21, 2020, with the unanimous approval of the Disciplinary Board of the House of Bishops. The Accord resolves the matter of my case, thus discharging any further action from the Hearing Panel.

The Accord stipulates the following: I will resign as Bishop Diocesan of the Diocese of Albany, effective February 1, 2021; I will begin a one month terminal sabbatical beginning January 1, 2021; I agree to continue to abide by the January 11, 2019 Restrictions placed upon my ministry by the Presiding Bishop until the effective date of my resignation as Bishop; I will work with the Presiding Bishop through the Office of Pastoral Development to help foster a healthy transition from my leadership as Bishop Diocesan, as the Diocese begins a new chapter in its history; and lastly, I acknowledge that upon February 1, 2021, the effective date of my resignation as Bishop Diocesan, my November 10, 2018, Pastoral Directive regarding B012 will lose force. Until then, however, it remains in effect.

In signing the Accord, the Presiding Bishop has agreed to allow me to notify the clergy and people of the Diocese of Albany of my pending resignation, before he sends out an announcement to the wider community. I am very appreciative of his willingness to agree to that pastoral request.

I met with Fr. Scott Garno, President of the Standing Committee, on Thursday afternoon, to inform him of my decision to resign and of the Accord between myself and the Presiding Bishop. I pledge my full support to Fr. Garno and the Standing Committee as they enter into their new role. I also pledge not to interfere with their deliberations.

Please note, that in accordance with Article IV of the Constitution of The Episcopal Church, the Standing Committee serves as the Ecclesiastical Authority of the Diocese in the absence of the Bishop. In addition, in accordance with the Diocesan Canons, the Standing Committee oversees the election of the new bishop of the Diocese.

The Diocese of Albany is blessed to have an excellent Standing Committee that will serve you well. I ask God’s blessing upon them as they prepare to lead the Diocese of Albany during this period of transition.

Read it all.

The Rt. Rev. William Love told the 152nd meeting of the Diocese of Albany synod that he will step down from office as bishop effective 1 February 2021. https://t.co/wZZGAtKrUv

— Judson Taylor (@judsontaylor) October 24, 2020

In a documentary that premiered Wednesday in Rome, Pope Francis called for the passage of civil union laws for same-sex couples, departing from the position of the Vatican’s doctrinal office and the pope’s predecessors on the issue.

The remarks came amid a portion of the documentary that reflected on pastoral care for those who identify as LGBT.

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” Pope Francis said in the film, of his approach to pastoral care.

After those remarks, and in comments likely to spark controversy among Catholics, Pope Francis weighed in directly on the issue of civil unions for same-sex couples.

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” the pope said. “I stood up for that.”

Read it all.

Judging by recent media coverage, Dan would seem to be the poster child for a wave of pandemic-related divorces that have swept America since March. “Why the coronavirus pandemic is leading so many couples to divorce,” read one New York Post headline this spring. The New York Times recently took a similar line: “Considering a Coronavirus Divorce? You’re in Good Company.”

But in real life, the net effects of the pandemic are not nearly as negative as many media reports would suggest.

Consider Katie, a 37-year-old wife and mother living in Virginia. The lockdown was initially stressful for her and her husband as they scrambled to forge a new schedule to cover their two jobs and child care for their toddler. But once they rearranged their schedule, things got better — in part because her husband took on a greater share of child care than he had prior to the pandemic and in part because they began taking walks and talking more in covid time. “It may sound strange, but the stay-at-home order and pandemic truly strengthened our marriage,” Katie observed.

Distress about the state of our unions certainly seems warranted. The tensions arising from being with your partner all day, every day; the disagreements about how to handle sanitation, socializing and schooling; and the stresses occasioned by lost lives, lost jobs and political tempests seem to never end. A major new survey of American families, the American Family Survey (AFS), found that 34 percent of married men and women ages 18 to 55 report the pandemic has increased stress in their marriage.

Yet Katie is not alone. Most married people in America report their unions have gotten stronger, not weaker, in the wake of covid-19. The AFS found that 58 percent of married men and women 18 to 55 said the pandemic has made them appreciate their spouse more, while 51 percent said their commitment to marriage had deepened. Only 8 percent said that the pandemic had weakened their commitment to one another.

Read it all.

Divorce is Down in COVID Time:

In 4 out of 5 states where divorce data is available, @lymanstoneky and I found that divorce filings are down in 2020.https://t.co/3wCee5XjGW @PostOpinions pic.twitter.com/kE0aXUPsWo

— Brad Wilcox (@WilcoxNMP) October 21, 2020

Episcopal bishops in the 1980s were already used to urgent calls from journalists seeking comments on issues ranging from gay priests to gun control, from female bishops to immigration laws, from gender-free liturgies to abortion rights.

But the pace quickened for Bishop William Frey in 1985 when he was one of four candidates to become presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. A former radio professional, Frey was known for his bass voice and quick one-liners. His Lutheran counterpart in Colorado once told him: “You look like a movie star, sound like God and wear cowboy boots.”

Other Denver religious leaders sometimes asked, with some envy, why Episcopalians got so much ink.

“I can’t understand why some people want the kind of media attention we get,” he told me during one media storm. “That’s like coveting another man’s root canal.”

A Texas native, Frey died in San Antonio on Sunday after years out of the spotlight. In addition to his Colorado tenure, his ministry included missionary work in Central America during the “death squads” era and leading an alternate Episcopal seminary in a struggling Pennsylvania steel town.

Read it all.

“Mitch Couch initially built just one desk for his daughter. After posting a YouTube tutorial, parents needing desks started reaching out, and other volunteers across the country joined in to help build desks for kids in need.”

Watch the whole thing.

Jürgen Klopp's personal letter to an 11 year old child who wrote to him about his stress and anxiety over starting secondary school this September gone.

He is much more than just our manager. 👏 #LFC pic.twitter.com/qqgddokfp3

— LFC Transfer Room (@LFCTransferRoom) October 11, 2020

Let’s just pause, for a moment, and consider the substance of this—and why people like me recoil in abject horror from the cries of some that “a lot of water has gone under the bridge” and that it’s time for us to learn how to “get along” and find what “common ground” we can. Essentially, Bishop Love, in being unwilling to do anything to aid anyone in actively doing what scripture forbids—in this case, blessing the sexual relationships of men with men and women with women, which everywhere in Scripture is contrary to God’s design, which is, as Paul says, an action that will keep you out of the Kingdom of God—is “violating” the discipline of the church. He is doing something that is contrary to what the church teaches.

The church, in this case, has set itself against the revealed will of God, on purpose, after thinking about it for years and years and years, and is going to discipline those who would like to faithfully follow the scriptures and teach and admonish and help others to do so.

A long time ago, when Bishop Love first was elected and decided to stay in TEC, I confess to wondering about the wisdom of his determination. Getting out of the Episcopal Church was one of the best things that ever happened to me. A church I loved, a church where I cut my teeth on the beauty, grace, and majesty of God, a church where the Bible was read so much aloud on Sunday that many other kinds of “bible believing” Christians were often astonished, became a church that derided and mocked those who really believed what was printed there on the page. I didn’t want to leave TEC. I begged God to be able to stay. But when we finally did walk away, which to me felt more like a shove, a great weight was lifted off my shoulders.

Indeed, shortly after realizing that we were not going to be able to remain in the church that we loved, Matt and I took a short day trip to Albany, to their beautiful retreat center, for a special Eucharist. Standing in a room full of others who really believed as they said the creed, who accepted Jesus as he is as they sang, was so strange and moving that I fought back an overpowering urge to cry the whole afternoon. It had been years since I had been in a church service full of people who all believed what they were saying, without their fingers crossed or a lot of explanatory footnotes at the bottom of the page. The decision of Bishop Love to stay and fight on struck me as one that would certainly exhaust and maybe even spiritually destroy him.

But look at the great wisdom of what God has done….

Read it all.

Youli Lee is proud of the years she worked for the U.S. government, prosecuting cybercrime in some of the world’s darkest places. These days, she’s the one hiding out — mostly from her three children, ages 8, 11, and 13.

“I just actually locked my door so that nobody could come here,” she says, from her bedroom.

The constant interruptions from children are happening in households across the country. Nearly half of all school districts in the U.S. started the school year with remote learning, including Lee’s district in Fairfax County, Va. With the added complexities of managing multiple Zoom calls at work and online learning for the kids, parents – especially moms — are hitting a breaking point.

For Lee, the juggling act fell apart in the spring. Her husband, a doctor, was at the hospital seven days a week while she worked from home, struggling to maintain her own grueling schedule of nonstop work calls. That went on for weeks until she realized that her younger two children were routinely skipping lunch. Without the structure of the school day, the kids never quite knew when it was time to eat.

So, when news came that the kids’ schools would only partially reopen at best, she realized that was it. “I can’t keep this up,” she remembers thinking. “This is too much.”

Read it all.

"Parents seem angry in a way that I haven't seen them in the past." @CaitlynMCollins and other incredible women on how Moms are keeping it together in the pandemic.https://t.co/nMtUvtAYME

— Andrea Hsu (@andrea_c_hsu) September 29, 2020

‘At just two years old, Bentley Boyers has undergone two surgeries after being born with a cleft lip. His family recently adopted a puppy with a cleft lip, and they’ve formed a special connection.’

Watch it all.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Grace and peace to you in Christ Jesus our Saviour and only Lord!

I am writing on behalf of the Gafcon family to let you know that Archbishop Ben Kwashi, our General Secretary and Archbishop of Jos, Nigeria, is undergoing treatment for cancer. Archbishop Ben & Mama Gloria along with their children are grateful for your prayers and concern.

At this stage there is little to report and the family asks for privacy while treatment continues and further tests are carried out….

Read it all.

Archp Ben Kwashi 'I am not afraid 2 die, I continue to live my normal life as U have seen but I do nurse the fear that I might get killed. My sure faith, however, is that until my time is over+assignment completed nothing shall yet happen to me' https://t.co/vlDROfEKFQ #nigeria pic.twitter.com/6rwuGtL9WY

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) July 3, 2018

Thousands of families across the Lowcountry struggle to afford diapers for their babies.

The inability to provide a sufficient supply to keep an infant or child clean, dry and healthy, also known as diaper need, was already a significant issue for families before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, in the wake of mass unemployment and widespread financial distress, the demand for free diapers has surged dramatically. As a result, many families across the country are turning to local diaper banks to help meet basic needs.

“We’ve seen a 222 percent increase in diaper needs since COVID started,” said Beth Meredith, president of the Junior League of Charleston.

Read it all.

One in three families struggle with diaper need, according to the National Diaper Bank Network.

The pandemic has only exacerbated this need.https://t.co/3bjriGNZjo

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) September 24, 2020

All four people have been isolated and are being cared for. They are being contact-traced. The school is on point, and I appreciate the transparency. That said, the miasma of anxiety the news summons is overwhelming.

But it’s also a good reminder to finish up our extraction plan. Both schools have told us that we need one in the event a COVID-19 surge on campus requires us to evacuate our daughters.

I don’t know how that will work. Honestly, I’m not sure how any of this will work.

Read it all.

As a mother of a rising freshman in college, I can tearfully relate to every bit of this… 2020 is like no other. Let’s hope for silver linings! “Class Of COVID-19: The Horrifying Sadness Of Sending My Kids To College During A Pandemic” https://t.co/fbph7nHsRa

— Ali Wing (@aliwing) September 16, 2020

The Man Behind the Red Bandana from Drew Gallagher on Vimeo.

Many compelling stories and photos from #September11, but this last known photo of @FDNY Firefighter Gary Box, running through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel towards the Twin Towers, always sends a chill down my spine ever since I first read this backstory: https://t.co/ParlMcMRoC pic.twitter.com/vaPXcXwRrE

— Tamar Abraham (@tamarabraham) September 11, 2020

The coronavirus outbreak has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading early this year, surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era.

In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of monthly Census Bureau data. The number living with parents grew to 26.6 million, an increase of 2.6 million from February. The number and share of young adults living with their parents grew across the board for all major racial and ethnic groups, men and women, and metropolitan and rural residents, as well as in all four main census regions. Growth was sharpest for the youngest adults (ages 18 to 24) and for White young adults.

Read it all.

A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depressionhttps://t.co/zmsedkeZmm pic.twitter.com/ozM42dELEK

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) September 4, 2020

Parents across America are facing the pandemic school year feeling overwhelmed, anxious and abandoned. With few good options for support, the vast majority have resigned themselves to going it alone, a new survey for The New York Times has found.

Just one in seven parents said their children would be returning to school full time this fall, and for most children, remote school requires hands-on help from an adult at home. Yet four in five parents said they would have no in-person help educating and caring for them, whether from relatives, neighbors, nannies or tutors, according to the survey, administered by Morning Consult. And more than half of parents will be taking on this second, unpaid job at the same time they’re holding down paid work.

Raising children has always been a community endeavor, and suddenly the village that parents relied on is gone. It’s taking a toll on parents’ careers, families’ well-being and children’s education.

In families where both wage earners need to work outside the home, parents have obvious logistical challenges because they cannot be in two places at once. Three-fourths of these parents say they will be overseeing their children’s education, and nearly half will be handling primary child care, according to the survey, answered by a nationally representative group of 1,081 parents from Aug. 4 to 8.

Read it all.

Put together, these are some wild stats in @clairecm‘s new piece:

—Only 1 in 7 parents have kids in full time school this year
—Only 1 in 5 will have in-person help from relatives, nannies, or tutorshttps://t.co/AChrKBnbkO

— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) August 19, 2020

If you visited Lochearn Camp For Girls, nestled on the shores of Vermont’s Lake Fairlee, during the summer months you’d likely hear the sounds of tennis balls hitting the court, horses trotting in the nearby corrals and girls laughing as they canoe in pristine waters.

But this year, the grounds are much quieter without the roughly 360 campers Lochearn welcomes each summer. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, camp director Tony Oyenarte and his team decided to close the overnight resident program for the 2020 season. “It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make as a camp director and as a businessman,” Oyenarte tells CNBC Make It.

“We’ve been open for 104 consecutive years. We went through the flu of 1918, both world wars, H1N1. But when June 1 came, and we had to make a decision for the summer, it was focused on: Are we gonna be able to deliver an experience that’s going to be safe and is it going to be fun?” Oyenarte says. And the short answer, after much soul searching, was no. “At the end of the day, we just said it’s not going to be the best experience for our campers and our staff.”

Read it all.

Coronavirus forced 62% of summer camps to close this year and early estimates predict the industry will take a $16 billion revenue hit https://t.co/xhnDRPgmQ0

— CNBC International (@CNBCi) July 3, 2020

It is here that Farrow’s book is so singularly helpful. The essay “Autonomy: Sic transit anima ad infernum” is worth the price of the book all by itself. In it he traces with both remarkable depth and enviable conciseness the rise of the modern self: the autonomous self-creator to whom reality must bend or, better still, for whom reality is merely what works best for the individual concerned. With roots in Rousseau and Nietzsche, this self lies behind Anthony Kennedy’s oft-cited fantasy of selfhood in Casey and lurks in the background of all the subsequent Supreme Court rulings on matters involving sexuality, up to and including Bostock. Indeed, Farrow makes the necessary point:

The autonomous will really has no choice but to attack the body as well as the mind. For the body is the most obvious locus of the given, the most stubborn impediment to the power claimed by the will.

Transgenderism is the logical outcome of all this. In fact, the annihilation of gender as a stable category tout court is the logical outcome—a point that seems to have eluded Justice Gorsuch, who apparently wants to keep his binary categories while not realizing the metaphysical depths of the revolution he has now placed into law.

The shock and awe surrounding the Bostock ruling perhaps indicates that the old task of apologetics is now being oddly reversed. The pressing pastoral need of the hour for the church is not to explain the faith to the world but rather first to explain the world to the faithful. If Richard Rorty’s famous quip—the truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying—works as a descriptive rather than prescriptive principle in terms of cultural dynamics, in terms of which arguments work and which do not, then it behooves us to ask in what kind of culture the stated logic of the Bostock decision has come to make sense. If Christians do not understand the wider context, then they will continue to underestimate the true depth of the cultural problem, be perplexed at the speed of apparent change, and be disturbed by new developments. And that will make it very hard to navigate this world as both good citizens and good stewards of the gospel.

Read it all.

It behooves us to ask in what kind of culture the stated logic of the “Bostock” decision has come to make sense.https://t.co/WEDQUHVIaq

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) June 28, 2020

‘Rob Kenney is using YouTube to share lessons he wished he had learned as a child growing up without a father. On his page, “Dad, How Do I?” Kenney shares useful advice on tasks such as tying a tie, changing a tire, and fixing a toilet, while providing encouragement to his over two million subscribers.’

Watch it all.

From there:

We give our thanks, Creator God, for the fathers in our lives.

Fatherhood does not come with a manual, and reality teaches us that some fathers excel while others fail.
We ask for Your blessings for them all and forgiveness where it is needed.

This Father’s Day we remember the many sacrifices fathers make for their children and families, and the ways–both big and small–they lift children to achieve dreams thought beyond reach.

So too, we remember all those who have helped fill the void when fathers pass early or are absent; grandfathers and uncles, brothers and cousins, teachers, pastors and coaches and the women of our families.

For those who are fathers, we ask for wisdom and humility in the face of the task of parenting. Give them the strength to do well by their children and by You.
In Your Holy name, O God, we pray.

Amen.

Whatever the caricatures, almost no one, even among the most religiously conservative, argues that religious freedom outweighs every other concern. Everyone recognizes that as with freedom of speech and other constitutional guarantees, there will be some hard cases.

But it would be tragic to trample over the consciences of citizens whenever their beliefs come into conflict with the fluctuating norms of secular sexual orthodoxy. Likewise, almost no rational person would suggest that a religious-freedom consensus would evaporate our “culture war” disputes. We have real differences, and they are not going away anytime soon. What’s perilous right now is how we choose to have these arguments.

One need not agree with Christians or Muslims or Orthodox Jews or others on marriage and sexuality to see that such views are not incidental to their belief systems. They did not emerge out of a political debate, and they won’t be undone by political power. In many cases, these beliefs aren’t even, first of all, about sex or family or culture in the first place, but about what these religious people believe undergird them. In the case of 2,000 years of small “o” (and big “O,” for that matter) orthodox Christians, this is the belief that sexual expression is confined to the union of a man and a woman because marriage is an icon of the gospel union of Christ and his church.

That does not mean, in any way, that all Americans of deep religious belief agree on how to address these questions in the public square. One could find multiple views — even in church pews — about what, for instance, public nondiscrimination laws should be. It does mean, though, that such views are not peripheral to the missions of many religious institutions. One cannot simply uproot them and expect these people to adjust their consciences to fit the new cultural expectation.

Read it all.

Grateful for @drmoore and this important word in the @nytimes.

Just How Secular Should America Be? https://t.co/e9r96M0CVO

— Dub Oliver (@DrDub_UU) June 18, 2020

Special circumstances. I am an only child, and my parents have health conditions that put them at a risk of getting very ill. Who is going to take care of them if I am at college? Not their siblings, who are also high risk, and not my grandparents, who are in their 80s. What happens to students who suffer from underlying medical conditions? What about graduate students and nontraditional undergrads who have children? What if elementary schools do not reopen in the fall or close midsemester? What if we see more young children develop COVID-related Kawasaki syndrome?

Worst-case scenario. The death rate for university-age students is estimated to be about 0.2 percent, and the hospitalization rate is estimated to be 2.5 percent. At a university like mine, with a student population of roughly 13,000, we risk having 325 students sick enough to be hospitalized and 26 students die in a worst-case-scenario outbreak. Our professors, though fewer in number, face even higher hospitalization and death rates.

Is this a price we’re willing to pay? If the decision were up to me, I would say no. If a vaccine or effective treatment were developed between now and January, such deaths would be entirely needless.

Read it all.

A student writes an open letter to administrators on her concerns about reopening campuses in the fall (opinion) https://t.co/Pa7jmDofFa

— James F. McGrath (@ReligionProf) June 15, 2020