An Anglican Church which says that it is acceptable to depart from this God given pattern of behaviour (or any elements of it), either in teaching, or in practice, is too broad.

Someone might object at this point ‘but surely no one would reject the basic pattern of Christian conduct outlined in the catechism?’ Sadly, however, such as rejection has taken place, and is taking place, in those Anglican churches which are supportive of same-sex sexual relationships and the adoption of transgender identities.

This is because to keep our bodies in ‘temperance, soberness and chastity, ‘ as the catechism glosses the seventh commandment, involves accepting the bodies we have as gifts given to us by God and using them only in ways that are in accordance with God’s will (see Romans 13:13-14 and Colossians 3:5-8).

Adopting a transgender identity is incompatible with accepting the bodies we have as gifts given to us by God, because the bodies we have are either male or female[20] and thus give us a male or female sexual identity. To adopt a transgender identity is to reject this sexual identity, given  to us in our bodies, as a gift from God. This is not to deny the reality of the distress caused by gender dysphoria, but it is to say that adopting a transgender identity is not a legitimate way to deal with this distress.

Being in a same-sex sexual relationship or a same-sex marriage is incompatible with using our bodies in accordance with the will of God, for the reasons helpfully summarised in the following quotation from J I Packer:

‘The Bible shows us that God created two genders for heterosexual attraction, with delight, leading to lifelong monogamous marriage for, among other things, the raising of stable and mature families; and he created sex for procreation with pleasure, and for reinforced bonding of the marriage relationship thereby. This is part of the God-given and God taught order of creation, an order that same sex unions directly contravene. So, however high- minded the participants and however faithful to each other they intend to be, same-sex bodily unions may not be viewed as a form of holiness (the Canadian Anglican General Synod of 2004 was wrong to speak of their ‘sanctity’), any more than sex with an animal (bestiality) can be so viewed. God sets limits, and obedience to him includes observing them. Sex is for marriage, and marriage is a heterosexual partnership, whatever modern society may say.’ [21]

Read it all.

Martin Davie–Why the Church of England Bishops Cannot Do what they are doing with Prayers for Same Sex couples https://t.co/ZiZJOWkIHC #anglican #theology #analysis #marriage #anthropology #ethics #holyscripture #BCP #anglican #religion #parishministry #UK 'The bishops argument… pic.twitter.com/FUM7TZSatW

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) October 27, 2023

Amber and Devin Weise lived in distant states when they met in an online social media group for Christian singles. They quickly became a couple, spending hours texting or talking on video chat. After several months of long-distance dating Devin wanted to propose, but thought it was proper and more romantic to do it in person.

Amber hinted she’d be OK with a proposal on a video call. Devin proposed and sent the ring in the mail.

It wasn’t until after they married that they learned the federal disability benefits program Amber relied upon penalizes couples who marry. Amber lost her monthly income check and the health care that came with it.

Amber is one of 7.4 million people who rely upon Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, a federal program that provides monthly cash assistance to disabled and older people with little income and resources. And for Amber and others, being on SSI is also the way they get health insurance.

Read it all.

Couples say they can't get married because of this government program's outdated rules. – Social Security's SSI program for people with disabilities requires couples to have no more than $3,000 in assets via NPR https://t.co/WZnjFejpUz

— Olav Mitchell Underdal (@omunderdal) June 20, 2024

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.

Yu Hong🎨 Faher and Son. #fathersdaycelebration pic.twitter.com/WuuD7hiw39

— Diana☀️ (@dianadep1) June 16, 2024

I’ve been thinking lately of that party, those women, the husbands they jettisoned like so much dead weight in a mimetic frenzy of best-life-living. Maybe the men were bad and deserved it, but it strikes me that nobody ever said so. My friends didn’t talk about being unhappily married; they just thought they’d be happier divorced, and no wonder. Even as divorce has retreated from the oft-cited peak rate of 50 percent, its place in the culture has all the urgency and incandescence of a current thing.

This year, we’ve already had a glut of divorce memoirs from authors celebrity and non; a much-hyped “divorce album” from Ariana Grande; a buzzy debut novel called The Divorcées, which is set on a ’50s “divorce ranch” in Reno; a piece in The Cut, on Valentine’s Day no less, entitled “The Lure of Divorce”; and a New York Times feature about how Emily Ratajkowski has set off a booming new market for “divorce rings,” refashioned from the wearer’s old wedding band. One of them is engraved with the word badass, a detail I would have found absolutely impossible to believe had it not been accompanied by photographic evidence.

Is it ^%$%$# to get divorced? Perhaps it was in the ’50s, when women had to schlep to Nevada to free themselves of their abusive husbands—or the ’70s, when women fought for the liberatory institution of no-fault divorce. And perhaps this history explains the current narrative, epitomized by a recent Guardian piece that portrays divorce as not just a path to empowerment but an exclusive sisterhood (the one I glimpsed among my newly single friends as they downed Jell-O shots and mimed intercourse on the kitchen countertop with a life-size plastic skeleton). Learning of the writer’s divorce, her hairdresser said, “all the coolest women she knew were divorced and sighed almost wistfully at the thought of it.”

Of course, these stories suffer from selection bias, in that they are created by and for the type of woman who sighs wistfully at the thought of divorce—as opposed to those of us who sometimes wake up sweating from nightmares in which we have inexplicably dumped our very good husbands. But they’re also a product of a popular “woman empowered by everything woman does” paradigm, where all choices made by women are a product of liberation, hence feminist, hence good. There is no error or disappointment that can’t be ^%$%$#@# away.

“Is it badass to get divorced? Perhaps it was in the ’50s, when women had to schlep to Nevada to free themselves of their abusive husbands.”@KatRosenfield on why glamorizing a trendy marital split in 2024 is merely “narcissism disguised as feminism.” https://t.co/THigCS8x59

— The Free Press (@TheFP) June 1, 2024

By now it’s a cliché that liberalism in the Anglosphere has become a religion, whether or not its adherents know it. But less often remarked is a fact somewhat in tension with this claim: namely, that its worshippers get to be minor gods too, making up the moral rules themselves. The past few weeks have offered up two new case studies for us to contemplate. The first involves a married couple from the US, Malcolm and Simone Collins, described as the “poster children of the pronatalist movement”, now thrust into an even wider media spotlight courtesy of a viral Guardian interview about their lifestyle. The second is a book by political philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre, Liberalism as a Way of Life, published on Tuesday.

Since the article about the Collins family first emerged a fortnight ago, most scandalised public reactions have been about the fact that father-of-four Malcolm was observed slapping his toddler’s cheek in a restaurant — albeit that the reporter noted it was “not a heavy blow”. Collins said the practice was agreed with his wife beforehand and modelled on their having watched “tigers in the wild” disciplining their offspring with the swipe of a paw. (Let us hope they didn’t also see the part where an adult tiger sometimes kills a cub for food.) This week, he wrote a further defence, blaming “much of the media” for being “hell-bent on presenting pronatalists as evil and backward”. To my mind, though, Malcolm and Simone could do with being a bit more backward; for even leaving their disciplinary habits aside, they seem to constitute the reductio ad absurdum of attempts to freestyle the moral universe.

In the Collins’s world, every stage of the childrearing process is approached as if to be redesigned from scratch. For instance: the couple have given their two little girls “gender-neutral names” — Titan Invictus and Industry Americus — apparently on the grounds that this will make the girls “more likely to have higher paying careers and get Stem degrees”. The fact that future employers are bound to presume such names could only have come from a terrifyingly crazy bloodline seems to have been discounted. A further justification offered by Malcolm is that such “strong names” will predispose their owners to “a strong internal locus of control”: that is, to that inner feeling, identified by psychologists, of being fully in command of whatever happens to you in life, as opposed to a helpless passive drifter. Clearly, he hasn’t imagined having to spell “Titan Invictus” out over the phone.

Wrote for @unherd about the pronatalist Collinses, and the claim that liberalism could be a satisfying atheist religion if only we were devoted enough https://t.co/OzX9Nhzr83

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) June 7, 2024

Reviewing the development of Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) reveals that it demonstrates an even more serious ‘PLF’ problem, one that is evident in other areas of church life as well: Persistent Leadership Failure. It first traces this failure back to the rushed origins of PLF in late 2022 and early 2023.

These resulted in further failures leading to an instability and incoherence which is traced from early 2023 to the present in relation to repeated changes in:

• For whom the prayers are being proposed;
• The theological and legal basis of the prayers;
• The relationship to the church’s supposedly unchanged doctrine where, contrary to the February 2023 Synod motion and the bishops’ original plan, PLF are now acknowledged to be “indicative of a departure from the Church’s doctrine”; and
• The canonical route by which the original proposed PLF are to be introduced. Here nine different stages favouring multiple different paths are summarised culminating in the latest reported “emerging proposal” to introduce standalone services by commending them for use for an experimental period under Canon B5.

This latest proposal has a certain logic as the prohibition on standalone services was an abuse of the House’s power and did not make canonical sense once the substance of the prayers were commended by the bishops for use under Canon B5.

However, there are ten problems with this route, some new but some previously recognised and given as reasons to reject commendation….

Read it all.

In the Church of England's 'Prayers of Love and Faith', does PLF actually stand for Persistent Leadership Failure? Where did the process go so badly wrong, and what are the numerous problems with the current proposals? @simonsarmiento @theologyethics1 https://t.co/P6uq2M6mEF

— Dr Ian Paul (@Psephizo) May 29, 2024

As birth rates plunge, many politicians want to pour money into policies that might lead women to have more babies. Donald Trump has vowed to dish out bonuses if he returns to the White House. In France, where the state already spends 3.5-4% of gdp on family policies each year, Emmanuel Macron wants to “demographically rearm” his country. South Korea is contemplating handouts worth a staggering $70,000 for each baby. Yet all these attempts are likely to fail, because they are built on a misapprehension.

Governments’ concern is understandable. Fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere and the rich world faces a severe shortage of babies. At prevailing birth rates, the average woman in a high-income country today will have just 1.6 children over her lifetime. Every rich country except Israel has a fertility rate beneath the replacement level of 2.1, at which a population is stable without immigration. The decline over the past decade has been faster than demographers expected.

Doomsayers such as Elon Musk warn that these shifts threaten civilisation itself. That is ridiculous, but they will bring profound social and economic changes. A fertility rate of 1.6 means that, without immigration, each generation will be a quarter smaller than the one before it. In 2000 rich countries had 26 over-65-year-olds for every 100 people aged 25-64. By 2050 that is likely to have doubled. The worst-affected places will see even more dramatic change. In South Korea, where the fertility rate is 0.7, the population is projected to fall by 60% by the end of the century.

Paying women to have more babies is a costly and socially retrograde mistake. Governments should focus on adapting economies to baby busts instead https://t.co/KFHKaaY3oz pic.twitter.com/m6x2QApSdg

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 23, 2024

Then, as now, the majority of global Anglicans believed that apostolic teaching calls for those engaging in sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage to be loved by the church and called to repent. Without repentance, such a person cannot be considered a “true shepherd” and therefore should be precluded from ordination or consecration. It was, therefore, TEC’s willingness to consecrate a man in a same-sex relationship which tore “the fabric of [the] communion at its deepest level.”

Returning to the events of Saturday 11th May 2024, Bishop Jill Duff told Anglican Futures that she was asked to attend the consecration of Bishop David Morris as a representative of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York…. She was very clear that it was in that capacity, rather than as an honorary assistant bishop in the Church in Wales, that she did so .

This raises a number of issues of national and international significance:

First, this means a bishop of the Church of England was involved in the consecration of a man whose conduct would prevent him from being consecrated as a bishop in the Church of England.

Read it all.

When @AnglicanFutures publishes a piece like this it quickly becomes obvious that the only real sin for @churchofengland bishops is to dissent from the idea that truth is best regarded as being plural. Nearly 3,000 reads shows how wrong that is. https://t.co/Z5hLAuYA8D

— Dan Leafe (@DanLeafe1) May 19, 2024

From there:

There’s a lot of water going under the Living in Love and Faith Bridge right now, including today, the 16th of May, a discussion at the House of Bishops. Whilst we do not know what they will conclude and what therefore will be brought to General Synod in July, it is clear that two things are going to happen. One, that the so-called ‘standalone services’ for blessings of same-sex relationships will be made possible.

And secondly, that, probably by the removal of ‘so-called’ discipline, that clergy in some dioceses are going to be able to marry their same-sex partners. Maybe as soon as this autumn. These are big changes, and I think it’s fairly clear that they are indeed indicative of a change of doctrine.

John Dunnett named new national director of the Church of England Evangelical Councilhttps://t.co/jjh3UMgwTm pic.twitter.com/YTRYb1tAkq

— Anglican Ink (@anglicanink) May 9, 2023

The world is at a startling demographic milestone. Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened.

Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation. The falling birthrates come with huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow and the standings of the world’s superpowers.

In high-income nations, fertility fell below replacement in the 1970s, and took a leg down during the pandemic. It’s dropping in developing countries, too. India surpassed China as the most populous country last year, yet its fertility is now below replacement.

Read it all.

The world is at a startling demographic milestone.

The baby bust is happening so quickly and so widely that it's taken many by surprise—with huge economic, social and geopolitical ​consequences. 🔗https://t.co/yrfXwbSpS2 https://t.co/yrfXwbSpS2

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 13, 2024

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, 10-time All-Star pitcher Clayton Kershaw stood atop the Los Angeles Dodgers dugout and declared his love for Jesus.

Microphone in hand, the future Hall of Famer thanked the thousands of fans — a sea of blue-and-white Dodgers jerseys and T-shirts — who stayed for the postgame program on Christian Faith and Family Day.

“Jesus, thank you so much for this day,” Kershaw said as he led the Dodger Stadium crowd in a prayer. “What an opportunity to get to be here and glorify you and talk about you and how much you mean in our lives. Help us every single day to follow you as best as we can.”

The scene, which I witnessed while reporting on MLB faith nights for Religion Unplugged last summer, reflected the importance of faith in the life of the three-time National League Cy Young Award winner.

“The Last Of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness,” a new book by Andy McCullough, touts itself as the definitive biography of the Dodgers ace.

Read it all.

“The Last Of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness,” a new book by @ByMcCullough, touts itself as the definitive biography of the Dodgers ace @ClaytonKersh22.@bobbyross’ Weekend Plug-in highlights five faith takeaways: https://t.co/eZsRrNSckR

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) May 10, 2024

In the decades immediately ahead, East Asia will experience perhaps the modern world’s most dramatic demographic shift. All of the region’s main states—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—are about to enter into an era of depopulation, in which they will age dramatically and lose millions of people. According to projections from the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic Social Affairs, China’s and Japan’s populations are set to fall by eight percent and 18 percent, respectively, between 2020 and 2050. South Korea’s population is poised to shrink by 12 percent. And Taiwan’s will go down by an estimated eight percent. The U.S. population, by contrast, is on track to increase by 12 percent.

People—human numbers and the potential they embody—are essential to state power. All else being equal, countries with more people have more workers, bigger economies, and a larger pool of potential soldiers. As a result, growing countries find it much easier to augment power and extend influence abroad. Shrinking ones, by contrast, struggle to maintain their sway.

East Asian countries will be no exception: the realm of the possible for its states will be radically constricted by the coming population drop. They will find it harder to generate economic growth, accumulate investments, and build wealth; to fund their social safety nets; and to mobilize their armed forces. They will face mounting pressure to cope with domestic or internal challenges. Accordingly, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will be prone to look inward. China, meanwhile, will face a growing—and likely unbridgeable—gap between its ambitions and capabilities.

Read it all.

In the coming decades, all of East Asia’s main states will experience an era of depopulation, making it more difficult for them to generate economic growth, mobilize armed forces, and extend influence abroad, writes Nicholas Eberstadt.https://t.co/uELJupGylq

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) May 8, 2024

A Response to the Primates Meeting in Rome

Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, Chairman of the Gafcon Primates Council pic.twitter.com/6RodpHUpkd

— Gafcon (@GafconGBE) May 6, 2024

You may find the link to the text of the full letter there.

“It may be that God is destroying the Church of England and who am I to stand in his way?

“The real tragedy would be if, in this traumatic, confusing time, if all of the evangelicals and the broader Orthodox group fall out with each other… if we can bear with each other in our different strategies, then that will be what we need (in whatever the future in England is going to be), whether that’s within the Church of England or outside.

Charlie Skrine, the senior minister of All Souls Langham Place London, says his church (and other evangelical churches in the UK) are in a world of pain at the moment over the growing split in the Church of England.

Mr Skrine, who is speaking at the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion Conference in Sydney, says All Souls is united in it’s commitment to biblical teaching on sexual ethics, but divided on what the best response should be.

Read and listen to it all.

O Lord, who through spiritual discipline didst strengthen thy servant Monnica to persevere in offering her love and prayers and tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine their son: Deepen our devotion, we beseech thee, and use us in accordance with thy will to bring others, even our own kindred, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

Saint Monica was an early North African Christian saint and the mother of Augustine of Hippo. A reprimand from a servant paved the way for her conversion to Christianity and she is honored for her outstanding Christian virtues. Her feast day is May 4th. https://t.co/fmk4bmhfqD pic.twitter.com/koZPa7WYzf

— Trivia Encyclopedia (@edpearce080759) May 3, 2024

“The whole world changed colour when I lost Beth,” Mr Palmer says. “People call it devastation: it’s too small a word. I was completely shattered. It was like being smashed to the ground.

“I was a firefighter [at Manchester Airport]. I’d spent years and years dealing with life-and-death situations. I taught trauma to first responders, and was very often on the other end of a defib. But losing my little girl just destroyed me.”

Feeling suicidal himself, he couldn’t talk to his family and couldn’t work, he says. The only thing that got him out of bed in the early days was his dog, Monty, whom he walked in the middle of the night so that he didn’t have to meet people. “I was in an awful place. But little things started happening.”

He felt compelled to write a journal — something that he had never done before — and discovered this to be an outlet for his anger and despair. He asked for help, and found good people in a counsellor, a local suicide-bereavement service, and the airport chaplain, George Lane.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

After his daughter’s death, Mike Palmer became one of ‘3 dads walking’ to raise awareness of young suicide. He talks to Catherine Larnerhttps://t.co/QVcXmHHCMd

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) April 28, 2024

Take the time to watch and listen to it all.

The Princess of Wales says she is in the early stages of treatment after a cancer diagnosis.

In a video statement, Catherine says it was a “huge shock” after an “incredibly tough couple of months”.

But she sent a positive message, saying: “I am well and getting stronger every day.”

Details of the cancer have not been disclosed, but Kensington Palace says it is confident the princess will make a full recovery.

Read it all.

Everyone at Westminster Abbey wishes The Princess of Wales well following the news of her cancer diagnosis.

The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, said: 'In the face of this news, it is our hope that Her Royal Highness will feel sustained by the love that… pic.twitter.com/mtBkNyF5tx

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) March 22, 2024

The tendency to downplay the value of toddler groups has been challenged in a new booklet that highlights the vital part that they play in preparing children for school.

The booklet, It’s not ‘just’ a parent and toddler group, has been compiled by a number of organisations brought together by Dave King, the strategic director for Gather Movement, an organisation that works with churches seeking to transform communities. The group including Kids Matter, Daniel’s Den, Care for the Family, 1277, 5 Minus, and Love and Joy Ministries.

It encourages those running groups to stop prefacing references to their work with “just” (“I’m just putting out some toys”), and sets out 12 aspects of school-readiness to which the groups can contribute.

Read it all.

Really enjoyed looking at a new booklet, "It’s not ‘just’ a parent and toddler group", about how they can contribute to school-readiness, & a chat with Jo Gordon of @DanielsDenUK. "The primary thing of a toddler group is that unconditional welcome to all" https://t.co/Gq1Wvx9xnE

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) March 19, 2024

We must transfer our collective faculty for care and compassion from thwarted or struggling adults to those children who need us. This need not be a matter of cruelty or stigma, but rather of reordering our priorities to what we know to be true. This is urgent: If we can’t even mount a normophilic defense of a baby’s need for his or her mother, we will have few resources left to defend our own organismic fundamentals in the face of the seemingly endless ambitions of biotech. Some are already preselecting IVF embryos based on genome analysis. Others propose the accelerated “evolution” of humans by means of in vitro gametogenesis. Others again propose gene-editing embryos. Just recently a breakthrough was announced in the synthetic creation of human embryos: in theory, children wholly without ancestors.

No one is coming to save us. We cannot wait for the “silent majority” to rise up and demand a return to common sense, or mumble about postponing action until we’ve re-Christianized the West, or until we’ve devised a fully worked-out post-Christian metaphysics of human nature. We may lament the Christianity-shaped hole in our discourse, but just because much of modern culture is post-Christian doesn’t mean we no longer have a nature. All we’ve lost is our common framework for naming that nature. We must speak the truth anyway. And wherever possible, we must redirect law and policy from the abolition of human nature to its flourishing.

Should this project be accused of oppressing or stigmatizing “the vulnerable,” we must recall that in reasserting the necessity of norms we are not attacking the most vulnerable. We are defending them. Normophobia imposed on babies and children an obligation to sacrifice their needs for the sake of our wayward desires. We must lift this burden from their little shoulders.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Of Note: "Children’s needs have not changed just because adult desires have grown more unruly." https://t.co/awSIeT6jFW @moveincircles

— Inst. Family Studies (@FamStudies) March 13, 2024

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Dream of St. Joseph by Rembrandt. pic.twitter.com/81VD0IUFXO

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) October 7, 2019

The death certificate for Ryan Bagwell, a 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, states that he died from a fentanyl overdose.

His mother, Sandra Bagwell, says that is wrong.

On an April night in 2022, he swallowed one pill from a bottle of Percocet, a prescription painkiller that he and a friend bought earlier that day at a Mexican pharmacy just over the border. The next morning, his mother found him dead in his bedroom.

A federal law enforcement lab found that none of the pills from the bottle tested positive for Percocet. But they all tested positive for lethal quantities of fentanyl.

“Ryan was poisoned,” Mrs. Bagwell, an elementary-school reading specialist, said.

Read it all.

Overdose or Poisoning? A New Debate Over What to Call a Drug Death.: Grieving families want official records and popular discourse to move away from reflexive use of “overdose,” which they believe blames victims for their deaths. https://t.co/EE9BNjgr23

— Sophia Devetzi (@SophiaDevetzi) March 11, 2024

Ed Lloyd Owen, a society wedding photographer, described the initiative “as a storm in a teacup”: he had not signed the petition and did not intend to, he told the Church Times this week. He saw the issue as a matter of co-operation.

“There is always going to be some friction between two people trying to do their jobs and getting in each other’s way slightly,” he said. “It’s overcome by simply making sure you speak to each other. I also observe the rule of no flash and don’t go near ‘the bubble’. I wear smart clothes (usually tails) and rubber-sole shoes, only move during hymns, and use silent cameras with long lenses.”

His view was not far from that of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, who told The Sunday Times this week: “While some vicars can be a complete pain and over-controlling to a degree, clergy too need to be able to do their jobs.”

It was reasonable, he said, for officiating clerics to ask photographers “not to be intrusive during a service when something significant is supposed to be taking place at the spiritual level”.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

A petition to “improve working conditions for wedding photographers in churches” — who have been accusing clerics of “abusive” behaviour towards them — has attracted almost 1000 signatures https://t.co/aiPUPXuo5s

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 5, 2024

In 2020, Virginia Martin lived two and a half miles from her office. Today, the distance between her work and home is 156.

Ms. Martin, 37, used to live in Durham, N.C., and drove about 10 minutes to her job as a librarian at Duke. After the onset of remote work, Ms. Martin got her boss’s blessing to return to her hometown, Richmond, Va., in March 2022, so she could raise her two young children with help from family.

As an ’80s-born “child of AIM,” Ms. Martin said of AOL instant messaging, it hadn’t been hard for her to maintain co-worker friendships online. She drives back to the office several times a year for events, most recently for the December holiday party.

Ms. Martin is part of today’s growing ZIP code shift: She is one of the millions of Americans who, thanks to remote and hybrid work, no longer lives close to where she works.

Read it all.

"The economists studied employee and employer address data from nearly 6,000 employers across the country and found that the average distance between people’s homes and workplaces rose to 27 miles in 2023 from 10 miles in 2019." (via @nytimes) https://t.co/MqgQkbgsij

— John Gramlich (@johngramlich) March 4, 2024

In the Times piece, law professor Lara Bazelon argued for what might be called the me-first divorce: “I divorced my husband not because I didn’t love him. I divorced him because I loved myself more.”

The message is clear: leaning into work, rather than family life, is the path to prosperity. But this seductive message in our individualistic age is completely at odds with the facts.

Consider this: in 2020, married mothers ages 18 to 55 had a median family income of $108,000, compared to $41,000 for childless single women in the same bracket, according to the 2020 American Community Survey. That’s more than twice as much, even if it’s split with a spouse. And as married women head toward retirement in their 50s, they’ve typically accumulated $357,000 in median assets, compared to less than $30,000 for their single peers, according to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY).

The same applies to men. Stably married men heading toward retirement have a staggering 10 times more assets than their divorced or never-married male peers, the NSLY data indicate.

Read it all.

Why You Should Get Married: What elite liberals and the online right both get wrong about getting hitched. @BradWilcoxIFS @TheFP https://t.co/uuh3UrgYSA

— Thomas S. Kidd (@ThomasSKidd) February 15, 2024

Among adults ages 18 to 34, 69% of those who have never been married say they want to get married one day. About a quarter (23%) say they’re not sure, and 8% say they don’t want to get married. Men and women are about equally likely to say they want to get married.

When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re not sure, and 18% say they don’t want to have children.

While 57% of young men say they want children one day, a smaller share of young women (45%) say the same.

Read it all.

69% of Americans ages 18 to 34 who’ve never been married say they’d like to marry someday. And 51% of that age group who don’t have children say they’d like to be parents eventually. https://t.co/S5zg43HjYq

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) February 16, 2024

For most Americans, the decline of teen pregnancies is a reason to celebrate; and for many, falling rates of teen sex represent an equally positive development.

But it’s not just sex that’s declined among teens; it’s romantic relationships overall. Teens are dating less. A survey conducted by the Survey Center on American Life found that only 56 percent of Gen Z adults—and 54 percent of Gen Z men—said they were involved in a romantic relationship at any point during their teenage years.[i] This represents a remarkable change from previous generations, where teenage dating was much more common. More than three-quarters of Baby Boomers (78 percent) and Generation Xers (76 percent) report having had a boyfriend or girlfriend as teenagers.

Forty-four percent of Gen Z men today report having no relationship experience at all during their teen years, double the rate for older men.

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A remarkable, lamentable decline:

“Teens are dating less. A survey [found] only 56 percent of Gen Z adults—and 54 percent of Gen Z men—said they were involved in a romantic relationship at any point during their teenage years” ~ @dcoxpolls @AEI https://t.co/m6QQYQAbqz

— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) February 8, 2024

Mitch was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, on his 40th birthday (September, 2021) when vacationing in Portugal. He was rushed to the United States to seek treatment at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston and to be with his family. During his 27-month long journey, he fought for his life seeking many types of treatments as well as traveling to Germany for a custom vaccine, consulting with doctors at Dana- Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at Duke’s Brain Cancer Center in North Carolina. Mitch’s persistent personality and determination to battle this cancer while continuing to maintain his routine and quality of life helped him to outlive the average glioblastoma patient. While undergoing treatment, he was quick to re-kindle time and make memories with family and friends.

Through his cancer journey Mitch became a strong Christian and was baptized. He became active at the Church of the Holy Cross on Daniel Island forming strong relationships with the community and men’s life group. Mitch wrote his testimony about his journey to Christianity and was passionate about sharing it with others. Through his ministry he reached many people sharing what he learned from his life and the message that it is never too late to seek God.

Mitch is survived by his parents, Jim and Wanda Petersen; his sister, Rebecca Petersen Leddy; his brother-in-law, Lee Leddy; his nephew, Logan Leddy; his nephew, Connor Leddy; his niece, Sophia Leddy; and his aunt, Sandra Garrison.

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James Mitchell ("Mitch) Petersen II RIP https://t.co/YbqpOMM5MU #death #family #faith #parishministry #southcarolina

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 13, 2024

Maternity services could close at one of two London hospitals due to fewer births, the NHS said.

NHS North Central London said it needed to cut the number of maternity units in its area due to declining birth rates.

It has launched a public consultation, proposing to close either the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead or Whittington Hospital in Archway.

Concerns have been raised but NHS bosses said “nothing has been pre-decided”.

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Fewer births may force London maternity services to close https://t.co/LM6P0G5lMH

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 12, 2023