Four in 10 young people around the world are hesitant to have children as a result of the climate crisis, and fear that governments are doing too little to prevent climate catastrophe, a poll in 10 countries has found.

Nearly six in 10 young people, aged 16 to 25, were very or extremely worried about climate change, according to the biggest scientific study yet on climate anxiety and young people, published on Tuesday. A similar number said governments were not protecting them, the planet, or future generations, and felt betrayed by the older generation and governments.

Three-quarters agreed with the statement “the future is frightening”, and more than half felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents. Nearly half reported feeling distressed or anxious about the climate in a way that was affecting their daily lives and functioning.

The poll of about 10,000 young people covered Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the US. It was paid for by the campaigning organisation Avaaz.

Read it all.

International survey of 10,000 young people. 🌍

🛑59% very or extremely worried about climate change
🛑Over 45% have feelings on climate change that negatively affect their daily lives and functioning
‼️Links between anxiety and government (in)action. https://t.co/jS3Ab8hV4w

— Green Health Wales (@GreenHWales) September 14, 2021

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

When I was invited to speak, I began by enumerating the points I wanted to make. I have learnt that this makes it harder for a presenter to cut me off before I have made all the comments that I plan to!

My first point was to note that our current approach in society is a novelty, and is the result of some fundamental changes in the way we think about our bodies, sex, and relationships. I have noticed that the debate often starts with the assumption that belief in same-sex marriage is obvious, natural, and is the final end goal for our thinking about relationships. A little bit of cultural and historical awareness, though, shows that, in comparison with most cultures in most of history, we are very odd; I also want to point out that we have faced very rapid changes in attitudes, and changes are likely to continue in one direction or another. I noticed that Andrew nodded his agreement on this point.

My second point was that the C of E is rooted in the 1662 BCP and the 39 Articles; if we are to change our doctrine of marriage then we will need to redefine the C of E. I went on to make the point I have made previously in various places, that there is a strong consensus of what the Bible says, and to introduce change we do (as Francis Spufford does with honesty) need simply to say that, on this, the Bible is wrong. Andrew seemed to agree with the first of these two, but shook his head on the second.

Read it all and please do watch the debate via the links provided.

Dear Clergy and Delegates,

To help you get to know the candidates for Bishop Coadjutor of The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina before our upcoming walkabouts and election, we are providing individual videos which we hope will give you a more personal introduction to each candidate.   Please view these in their entirety before the walkabouts. If you have not yet registered for a walkabout you may do so here.

You may read the candidates’ spiritual autobiographies and view their resumes here.

Take the time to go through all three.

In my sister’s case, as in many others, the school board delayed its decision about mask wearing until the very last minute. It also reversed course: After saying two weeks ago masks would be encouraged but optional, the board held a 4.5 hour public meeting this week, which ended with the announcement that they would require them.

And then, said my sister, “People flipped out.” Those opposed to masks are now promising boycotts, walkouts and protests in front of the school. Threats being made online suggest even worse. My sister looks on, feeling helpless as she thinks about her three children, two of whom have had to endure this seemingly endless combat for most of high school. “It’s just, when does it end?” she said to me.

The question is particularly acute for parents of younger children. They have spent most of the last 18 months trying to negotiate the changing needs of their children’s education and well-being while also managing their own jobs and health. And while teenagers and adults have been able to enjoy much greater freedom since getting vaccinated, there is no vaccine yet for children under 12.

I spoke to 10 parents from across the country to hear how they are doing in the midst of it all. While their situations varied greatly—sometimes to the point that it seemed like they lived in different countries—what I found were people wanting to be hopeful, trying to keep perspective and yet also in many cases anxious, frustrated and exhausted by their schools, states, fellow parents and our current reality….

Read it all.

‘When does it end?’ Parents on the most stressful back-to-school season of the pandemichttps://t.co/aN3zVqEEe7

— America Magazine (@americamag) August 31, 2021

The last conversation Keith Chapman had with his younger brother Nathan Chapman was on Christmas Day 2001. Nathan had called up his family from Afghanistan.

Although the 31-year-old, a sergeant first class with the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Group, couldn’t disclose his location, his family put it together based on what time Nathan said it was where he was calling from.

“I don’t remember that we said very much,” Keith said during a StoryCorps interview in Frederick, Md., last week with their mother, Lynn Chapman.

That wasn’t so unusual. The brothers, just 2 1/2 years apart in age, had always had a complicated dynamic that was born from their two very different personalities.

A couple weeks after that phone call, Keith heard on his car radio that an American soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. He thought, “Well, yes, Nathan is there, but he’s one of who knows how many? So, I put it out of my mind.”

That is, until he got home that evening.

“My wife greets me at the door and says, ‘I have bad news,’ ” he said.

Read or listen to it all.

Nathan Chapman was killed in action near the town of Khost on Jan. 4, 2002. The 31-year-old sergeant first class with the U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Group was the first American soldier to be killed by enemy fire in the war in Afghanistan. https://t.co/0jEG3weiVS

— NPR (@NPR) August 28, 2021

On Monday, [the] Rev. Thomas McKenzie and his 22-year-old child Charlie were killed in a car crash. The two were en route to New Mexico where Charlie, who had recently changed their legal name, was set to start their senior year at college.

“It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you that this morning, Thomas and his 22-year-old daughter Ella died in an accident on Interstate 40 west of Nashville,” wrote Church of the Redeemer’s associate pastor Rev. Kenny Benge in an email.

“They were driving to Santa Fe, New Mexico where Ella was to continue her studies at St. John’s College. Thomas was just beginning his well-deserved sabbatical.”

Read it all.

Father Thomas McKenzie and his daughter were killed in a car crash on their way to New Mexico where she was set to start her senior year of college. https://t.co/4kVWGVqtbH

— RELEVANT (@RELEVANT) August 24, 2021

More than a million children around the world may have been orphaned by COVID-19, losing one or both parents to the disease or related causes.

Another estimated 500,000 lost a grandparent or another relative who cared for them.

The numbers are from a new study by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others that highlight another grim reality in the sweeping devastation caused by the ongoing pandemic.

Read it all.

“I tell every new player … that the essence of my coaching is to serve,” said Williams, the National Basketball Coaches Association’s 2021 coach of the year. “As a believer in Christ, that’s what I’m here for. … I tell them all the time, if I get on you, I’m not calling you out – I’m calling you up.”

That message meshes well with what superstar Chris Paul writes on his sneakers game after game: “Can’t Give Up Now.” That’s a popular Gospel song with this chorus: “I just can’t give up now. I’ve come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me the road would be easy and I don’t believe He’s brought me this far to leave me.”

Williams and Paul have known each other for a decade, with professional and personal ties strengthened by pain and frustration. While Paul’s on-court struggles are well documented, it’s impossible to understand their bond without knowing the details of his coach’s life as a Christian, husband and father of five children.

“The real reason to watch” the playoffs this year, said former ESPN commentator Jason Whitlock, in his “Fearless” podcast, is “that God has placed a messenger inside the NBA’s secular madness. Monty Williams might be the most important man in sports. The 49-year-old former Notre Dame and NBA player is the leader and example that America needs right now.”

Read it all.

“After Tia Wimbush and Susan Ellis connected over their husbands’ kidney failures and a long transplant waiting list — a serendipitous moment occurred. Tia and Susan realized they matched blood types for each other’s spouse. Several months later and after a smooth recovery, the pair say they are now family.”

Watch it all.

The summer of 2021 is proving to be an interesting time for the conservative Protestant denominations of the U.S. First, the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting witnessed the contentious election of a new president, who was engulfed in controversy almost as soon as the result was announced. Then the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) met in St. Louis for a General Assembly (GA) that was inevitably focused on questions of sexual identity and Christianity that have been brought to the fore by Revoice. In particular: Is it acceptable for a Christian minister to identify as a celibate gay Christian, thereby legitimizing “gay” as an identity, while still maintaining the traditional Christian teaching on sexual acts?

To outside observers of the PCA, like myself, the result was encouraging and surprising. What happened, as outlined here and here, was that the Assembly voted to propose several changes to the denomination’s Book of Church Order (the manual of church law) that would prevent anyone who identifies as gay or same-sex-attracted from holding office in the denomination. The proposed new rule states, “Those who profess an identity (such as, but not limited to, ‘gay Christian,’ ‘same-sex attracted Christian,’ ‘homosexual Christian,’ or like terms) that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires . . . or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions are not qualified for ordained office.” The Assembly also proposed to make examination of a ministerial candidate’s attitude to his sexual struggles part of the ordination process. Both proposals passed with huge majorities and will now be discussed by the presbyteries. If approved by two-thirds of them, they will be subject to a final vote for approval, by simple majority, at next year’s GA.

Read it all.

The PCA has reaffirmed biblical teaching on sexuality despite loud voices promoting the opposite.https://t.co/dblzKmJOjj

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) July 8, 2021

“Neighbors immediately called 911 after a 6-year-old girl was kidnapped while outside with her bike in Louisville, Kentucky. Police officers quickly located the car to rescue the little girl.”

Watch it all.

“Kansas teachers Mason McDowell and Alexandra Stamps, both first-year teachers, invited their third and fifth grade students to be junior bridesmaids and groomsmen at their wedding.”

Watch it all.

So will a fertility bust destroy religion? No, or not exactly, for two reasons. The first is that the fall of religious institutions does not necessarily destroy faith as such, or eliminate spiritual hunger. Witness the upsurge of pilgrimage across supposedly secular Europe. The question that then arises is how long private and individual faith can endure without institutions, and we simply do not have the historical records to answer that question.

Also, presently at least, the fertility decline is patchy. There are large areas of the globe it has not yet affected—above all, Africa. For a generation at least, that continent’s two great faiths, Islam and Christianity, will be flourishing in that setting, if not elsewhere. After 2050, the crystal ball becomes distinctly cloudy, but it is highly likely that even Africa will eventually move to the low-faith and low-fertility model.

The Times study demands that we think beyond simple secularization and through the linkage between the size and structure of families—and about what churches actually do. Only when we take children out of the picture do we realize just how much of what churches have always done has focused on the young. Besides Sunday school, this means bringing them through the rites of passage, from baptism, confirmation, and first communion to summer camp and vacation Bible school. Such activities are what binds people to religious communities. If you want to see churches where the young are largely absent, then look to Europe, and worry. In the words of the prophet Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone….

Read it all.

What is most sad about Bayes’ argument is the attitude it betrays of those who disagree with him. Unlike those enlightened members of MoSAIC, who are on an exciting journey of learning, the orthodox are apparently stuck in the past, refusing to learn, and trapped in a fear of sex and of their own bodies. They are either asleep, or they are anti-liberal authoritarians, no better than reactionary racists or those who despise the disabled. This dismissive and patronising language is hardly the approach that the LLF process, signed off by Bayes as part of the House of Bishops, wanted to encourage; it is the most exclusive kind of ‘inclusion’.

How Bayes can act as a shepherd to the orthodox in his diocese, whilst viewing them in this way, I do not know. What is worse is that he has made these comments public—so he must intend those whose views he dismisses to know that he views them with such derision.

And how he can be a teacher of the faith, when he waves away actual theological reflection as ‘glittering arguments of the brain’?

A clergy friend of mine made this comment online:

The Church has always grown when its offered a radical alternative to an increasingly morally lost and confused society and, when becoming a member of the Church carries a risk—the test of commitment factor. On my knowledge of rural demographics I think we have 5–7 years left before around 80% of all C of E rural churches will close due to non viability—if not before. But a new, confident Church, anchored to biblical orthodoxy but with the Spirit’s liberating gracious welcome, can offer what our lost and vacuous society needs right now.

Some years ago, gay atheist Matthew Parris said something similar.

As a gay atheist, I want to see the church oppose same-sex marriage…Even as a (gay) atheist, I wince to see the philosophical mess that religious conservatives are making of their case. Is there nobody of any intellectual stature left in our English church, or the Roman church, to frame the argument against Christianity’s slide into just going with the flow of social and cultural change?

Can’t these Christians see that the moral basis of their faith cannot be sought in the pollsters’ arithmetic? What has the Irish referendum shown us? It is that a majority of people in the Republic of Ireland in 2015 do not agree with their church’s centuries-old doctrine that sexual relationships between two people of the same gender are a sin. Fine: we cannot doubt that finding. But can a preponderance of public opinion reverse the polarity between virtue and vice? Would it have occurred for a moment to Moses (let alone God) that he’d better defer to Moloch-worship because that’s what most of the Israelites wanted to do?

It must surely be implicit in the claim of any of the world’s great religions that on questions of morality, a majority may be wrong; but this should be vividly evident to Christians in particular: they need only consider the fate of their Messiah, and the persecution of adherents to the Early Church. ‘Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you.’… These, and not the gays, are now the reviled ones. Popular revulsion cannot make them wrong.

Unless other bishops speak out and offer better leadership and a clearer vision, with bishops like Paul Bayes, who deny the doctrine of their own church, despise those who do, and prefer the agenda of the world to God’s own revelation of himself, the Church of England is doomed.

Read it all.

New post: Should the church ‘let the world set the agenda’ on ethics and doctrine? https://t.co/86QN8Q8tFc

— Dr Ian Paul (@Psephizo) June 28, 2021

Read it all.

https://t.co/5TQgvMjpkN

— Sarah Jones (@SarahJonestoo) June 26, 2021

She’s zeroed in on the moments deputies grappled with him after deploying the pepper spray and Tasers.

Every viewing seems to lead to more questions, like when Jamar, her youngest son, spotted bandages on Jamal’s legs as deputies moved in on his cell.

She wonders how he received those injuries. She knows her search for accountability isn’t over.

Amid the questions and the grief, amid the loss of the son who clung closest to her side, Amy Sutherland takes comfort in one fact — her son’s final moments were spent calling out to his Lord.

“Hallelujah,” he could be heard in deputies’ body camera video. “Hallelujah.”

Read it all.

This story brought me to tears. @GregoryYYee does a wonderful job conveying Jamal Sutherland's humanity. Nice work, my friend. https://t.co/YGAV0VVdW4

— Angie Jackson (@AngieJackson23) June 25, 2021

Civil weddings will be permitted to take place outdoors for the first time in England and Wales from next month.

The ceremonies at approved premises such as hotels currently need to be in a room or other permanent structure.

The change, which also applies to civil partnerships, will allow outdoor ceremonies from July to next April, and will mean more guests can attend events affected by social-distancing rules.

A consultation will take place to see if the change should become permanent.

Read it all.

Outdoor civil weddings and partnerships get the go ahead in England and Wales https://t.co/2ENLZE9n92

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 20, 2021

A baby born weighing less than a pound has beaten the odds and celebrated his first birthday, becoming the most premature baby to survive, according to Guinness World Records.

When Richard Scott William Hutchinson was born five months prematurely — recognized by Guinness as the world’s most premature baby — his doctors prepared his parents for the worst.

Richard was born at Children’s Minnesota hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after his mother, Beth Hutchinson, suffered medical complications that caused her to go into labor.

Read it all.

What a story! This little dude was given 0% of surviving after being born 5 months prematurely.

He just celebrated his first birthday. https://t.co/eUPzzx1DTh

— Steve Gustafson (@stevethegoose) June 20, 2021

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.

From a window seat in a back row, the teenager watched a bolt of lightning strike the plane’s right wing. She remembers the aircraft nose-diving and her mother saying, evenly, “Now it’s all over.” She remembers people weeping and screaming. And she remembers the thundering silence that followed. The aircraft had broken apart, separating her from everyone else onboard. “The next thing I knew, I was no longer inside the cabin,” Dr. Diller said. “I was outside, in the open air. I hadn’t left the plane; the plane had left me.”

As she plunged, the three-seat bench into which she was belted spun like the winged seed of a maple tree toward the jungle canopy. “From above, the treetops resembled heads of broccoli,” Dr. Diller recalled. She then blacked out, only to regain consciousness — alone, under the bench, in a torn minidress — on Christmas morning. She had fallen some 10,000 feet, nearly two miles. Her row of seats is thought to have landed in dense foliage, cushioning the impact. Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash.

Miraculously, her injuries were relatively minor: a broken collarbone, a sprained knee and gashes on her right shoulder and left calf, one eye swollen shut and her field of vision in the other narrowed to a slit. Most unbearable among the discomforts was the disappearance of her eyeglasses — she was nearsighted — and one of her open-back sandals. “I lay there, almost like an embryo for the rest of the day and a whole night, until the next morning,” she wrote in her memoir, “When I Fell From the Sky,” published in Germany in 2011. “I am completely soaked, covered with mud and dirt, for it must have been pouring rain for a day and a night.”

Read it all.

In 1971, Juliane Diller fell 10,000 feet into the Amazonian forest: "The jungle is as much a part of me as my love for my husband, the music of the people who live along the Amazon and its tributaries, and the scars that remain from the plane crash.” https://t.co/TCzcQWe0WY

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) June 19, 2021

Luz Portillo, the oldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, has many plans. She is studying to be a skin care expert. She has also applied to nursing school. She works full time, too — as a nurse’s aide and doing eyelash extensions, a business she would like to grow.

But one thing she has no plans for anytime soon is a baby.

Ms. Portillo’s mother had her when she was 16. Her father has worked as a landscaper for as long as she can remember. She wants a career and more control over her life.

“I can’t get pregnant, I can’t get pregnant,” she said she tells herself. “I have to have a career and a job. If I don’t, it’s like everything my parents did goes in vain.”

Read it all.

"“The story here is about young women, whose births are plummeting,” said Caitlin Myers, an economist at @Middlebury who analyzed county-level birth records… “All of a sudden, in the last 10 years, there’s this tremendous transformation.”"https://t.co/YTH4HhZy6S

— Elise Shanbacker (@lizziellen) June 16, 2021

Durkheim was a trenchant critic of the contractual view of marriage, in which the relationship is said to involve only the two spouses and to depend entirely on their satisfaction with each other. In his 1906 essay “Divorce by Mutual Consent,” he criticized the liberalization of divorce that many secular intellectuals then championed. Like their counterparts today, the latter argued that it was clearly in the interests of both parents—and frequently of their children—for marriage to be dissolvable by agreement of the spouses alone. Durkheim countered that such a shift potentially harms the institution of matrimony itself.

Durkheim noted empirical evidence that divorce affects suicide rates. Marriage appeared to significantly reduce the likelihood of suicide, and in the parts of Durkheim’s France in which divorce was more common, this positive effect of marriage was weaker. Although married women were less likely to commit suicide only if their marriage had yielded children, for married men the risk was less in many scenarios. Absent an exterior regulatory force or presence, Durkheim reasoned, individual men are largely ineffective at moderating their sexual energies, and they end up emotionally distressed and dissolute. The marital institution regulates their desires. However, he went on, “Regulation from which one can withdraw whenever one has a notion is no longer regulation.” By removing the judge—the representative of society, whose authority historically extends from the religious origins of the polity—from the decision-making process of divorce, contractual marriage inevitably weakens the regulatory force of marriage.

Durkheim also insisted that marriage affects parties beyond the two spouses, most obviously their children. Children so change the marital relationship that, once they exist, they alter the marriage’s purpose. In Durkheim’s view, the couple, formerly the end of the relationship, becomes but a means to the end of the family for which they are responsible. Spouses’ obligation to their children clearly invalidates a model for divorce based merely on mutual consent.

Even the partners themselves may benefit from marriages that they would rather escape out of anger or spite. Although in a few marriages disharmony between the spouses may be so great that separation is the only reasonable path, Durkheim maintained that there are many, many more “simply mediocre marriages”—exciting and joyous only in an irregular, inconstant manner—that nonetheless produce “sufficient feeling for . . . [the] duty . . . to fulfill [one’s] function.” They thereby they provide a significant social good. This argument was almost perfectly consonant with that of the Christian conservatives of Durkheim’s day. It also scandalizes most contemporary sociologists, who have moved far from the origins of their discipline.

Read it all.

Who Knew Émile Durkheim Was a Conservative on Sex and Marriage? https://t.co/cmI8dWEQn9

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) June 4, 2021

The Bints, who live in Chagford in Devon, formed a support bubble when their children returned home at the start of the crisis.

Jon Bint said it meant they were in a “unique” position to ring the bells in line with Covid-19 guidance.

He described the family’s experience as a “one-off moment in time”.

Many parishes across the UK fell silent during lockdown as churches were forced to close, and social distancing made it difficult for more than one household to ring the bells.

The family affair began when Mr Bint first met his wife bell-ringing more than 30 years ago.

Over the years they passed on their skills to their two sons Joe and Gabe, and more recently, their daughters Holly and Morwenna.

Read it all.

Covid: Family keeps Chagford bells ringing through pandemic https://t.co/93K13Unsn2

— BBC Health News (@bbchealth) June 10, 2021

“Kazakhstan made a very bold move by being the first country to repatriate large numbers of its nationals,” Chris Harnisch, a Trump State Department official who worked on the issue, said in an interview. “They were not dipping their toe in the water. They went all in.” The Kazakh government repatriated 607 citizens through a program called Operation Zhusan. Most were women (157) and children (413). Thirty-seven adult male fighters faced prosecution upon arrival. Another 32 women and 89 children returned themselves.

The Kazakh government sends women and children to rehabilitation centers, where they undergo a long process to help them reintegrate into society. Some return completely jaded, while others remain committed to ISIS: One woman tried to smuggle the group’s propaganda into Kazakhstan in a child’s toy.

“We are trying to bring them back to normal,” then-Deputy Foreign Minister Yerzhan Ashikbayev told me earlier this year. “We would like to see them as ordinary people.” This created controversy domestically, but the government held firm.

Read it all.

When ISIS Families Come Home
Kazakhstan’s efforts at rehabilitation and reintegration put Europe to shame: law enforcement can help mitigate risk but “we will not be probably at 100% success and we will definitely be having problems.” https://t.co/KJFmN5N1ft

— Phil Gurski (@borealissaves) June 11, 2021

And so we have come on to a crisis point. Some think it is a turning point. The Spectator last week published its Americano podcast with the intriguing title “Is the sexual counterrevolution coming?”. https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/is-the-sexual-counterrevolution-coming-

It is a revealing and fascinating listen (although wrong in some respects as regards Christianity and Calvinism). Along with some articles published a couple of years earlier it points to a world where sexual freedom has led to sexual fear and to a new secular puritanism. Every word is to be scrutinized, safe spaces established, ‘women-only’ carriages on trains’ etc. In an era that is obsessed with sex (was it ever different?) and where we have such sexual freedom, the irony is that many are concluding that it’s better not to have sex at all. We live in a world where Fifty Shades of Grey is feted as feminist erotica, even though it glorifies male dominance and violence, while a man putting his hand on a woman’s knee is an evil sign of the patriarchy. Our answer to misogyny (hatred of women) is apparently misandry (hatred of men). Put those two together and you end up with misanthropy (hatred of human beings). In the age of humanism we are heading towards a society that likes the idea of humanity; it’s just humans it can’t stand.

There are some Christians who think that this backlash is a good thing and that it might herald better days ahead. I’m not convinced. I think that we live in a confused, hurting and increasingly irrational culture, where the gods of money, power and sex still reign. I don’t believe that a return to a perceived golden age of Victorian morality is either possible or desirable. What we really need is to go back even further – to the 1st century Greco-Roman Pagan world.

In a sense we are already there. Unlike the myth sold us by the false apostles of the new sexual revolution, this was not a time of sexual bliss but one of confusion, abuse, slavery, sexual diseases, infanticide and abortion, immorality, and the rich and powerful ruling over and using the poor and weak. In other words instead of our society progressing we have regressed to the Greco/Roman/Pagan past. We have gone back to the future.

So it’s simple. Christians should do in the 21st century, what it did in the 1st: preach the Gospel, care for the poor, avoid all sexual immorality, live in a community of love and fellowship and keep ourselves from being tainted by the world.

Read it all.

Welcome to the Sexual Counter-Reformation https://t.co/8jQzSVSzdh pic.twitter.com/5W5ATrEN9x

— David Robertson (@theweeflea) November 8, 2017

Pringle Franklin recently interviewed Pastor Matthew Rivers of St. John’s and his wife, Henrietta. Watch the video below to learn the vision he and Henrietta have for St. John’s and how God rescued Matt from a self-centered life and opened his eyes to true love (Hat tip: Saint Philip’s, Charleston).

‘The children of fallen service members run in a 5k race every year to honor their parents, who gave their lives in service to this country. Military members are paired up as training mentors with the runners in the annual Memorial Day race just outside of Seattle, Washington.’

Watch it all.

Curt Austin doesn’t like to stay in his hometown on Memorial Day weekend.

It has been eight years since his son, Pfc. Barrett Austin, took his last breath at a hospital in Germany after being wounded by a roadside bomb in the Maidan Wardak Province of Afghanistan.

The 20-year-old was the only soldier in the four-person Army vehicle convoy who died in the attack.

Since his death in 2013, Curt and his wife Yolanda continue to receive an outpouring of support from the community. It’s appreciated, but it’s also what makes Memorial Day difficult each year. It’s that buildup of seemingly constant reminders from the media, politicians, radio ads, furniture stores and even strangers on the street that create a storm of painful memories around the solemn holiday.

Read it all.

Local paper front page #memorialday pic.twitter.com/ZbNJPTB5CV

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) May 31, 2021

During surgery, Dr. Madge Ellis found the cancer had spread to Ben’s liver and he was, shockingly, Stage 4. Ben definitely would have died had the Holy Spirit not rather miraculously told us to invite him to come here for treatment.

7 months and 12 brutal rounds of chemo later, Ben is healthy.

Ben’s levels of CEA (protein “tumor markers”) are within the normal range. In layman’s terms, the chemo was effective and Ben appears posed to have a much longer life!

Annette and I have been honored to share our home and our lives with them. We will never, ever forget them. They are dear to us.

++Ben and Mama taught us many things in the last 7 months. They are beautiful reflections of Jesus, they are wise, they are joyful.

Read it all.

Thread 1/2 "Their life story is one of courage, faith and boundless love.”
Gafcon's General Secretary, Archbishop Ben Kwashi and his wife Gloria Kwashi were awarded the second annual Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Award last night. Please join us in congratulating pic.twitter.com/Fx50TbIX9E

— GAFCON (@gafconference) October 1, 2019