Allan Edwards is the pastor of Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in western Pennsylvania, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. He’s attracted to men, but considers acting on that attraction a sin. Accordingly, Edwards has chosen not to act on it.

“I think we all have part of our desires that we choose not to act on, right?” he says. “So for me, it’s not just that the religion was important to me, but communion with a God who loves me, who accepts me right where I am.”

Where he is now is married. He and his wife, Leanne Edwards, are joyfully expecting a baby in July.

Read it all.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Detterman is the national director of The Fellowship Community, formerly called Presbyterians for Renewal. He is among those who have chosen to stay with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) despite its increasing liberal theological stances.

The Fellowship Community is a biblically orthodox group within PCUSA. Detterman told The Christian Post in a recent interview that he and his organization are staying with the PCUSA because “it is a matter of call and of mission.”

“We are uniquely equipped to reach out to others in and through the PC(USA) because we know the territory well,” said Detterman.

Read it all.

1. The number of unchurched people in America would make the 8th most populous country in the world.
As of 2014, the estimated number of people in the U.S. who Barna Group would define as “churchless”””meaning they have not attended a Christian church service, other than a special event such as a wedding or a funeral, at any time during the past six months””stands at 114 million. Add to that the roughly 42 million children and teenagers who are unchurched and you have 156 million U.S. residents who are not engaged with a Christian church. To put that in context, if all those unchurched people were a separate nation, it would be the eighth most populous country in the world, trailing only China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the remaining churched public of the United States (159 million).

2. In the past decade, more people in the U.S. have become churchless than live in Australia or Canada.
Barna tracking research has seen significant shifts in church involvement over the past decade. During that time, the number of adults who are unchurched has increased by more than 30%. This is an increase of 38 million individuals””that’s more people than live in Canada or Australia.

3. The vast majority of America’s churchless have attended a church.

Read it all.

Most merciful God, for whose chosen handmaid and her Holy Babe there was no room in the inn at Bethlehem: Help us all by thy Spirit to make room for the Christ in our common days, that his peace and joy may fill our hearts, and his love flow through our lives to the blessing of others; for his name’s sake.

Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.

–Psalm 66: 8-9

Every December, Barna Group compiles its top findings and trends from research conducted in the past year. From legalizing marijuana to increasing secularization trends to America’s complicated relationship with sports””2014 was an interesting year.

1. Bible Skepticism Is Now Tied with Bible Engagement….

2. Young Adults Question the Value of Their College Degree….

3. Global Poverty Is on the Decline, but Almost No One Believes It….

Read it all.

Chesterton’s preference for paradox was never hospitable to platitudes. “Familiarity breeds not contempt, but indifference,” Jackson suggests. Chesterton adds: “But it can breed surprise. Try saying ‘Boots’ ninety times.” He is ready, though, to applaud Jackson if he finds something strikingly true. Under Jackson’s remark, “There is nothing old under the sun,” he is content to write, “Very good.”

Chesterton does not share Jackson’s amorphous idea of belief. “No two men have exactly the same religion,” Jackson writes, “a church, like society, is a compromise.” Chesterton’s reply is: “The same religion has the two men. The sun shines on the evil and the good. But the sun does not compromise.”

Chesterton becomes most exasperated when Jackson expresses the conventionally pessimistic social Darwinism in which his thought had developed. It is not a profanity that he employs when he responds to Jackson’s remark, “The most hopeful sign of the present age is the decline of the birth rate,” by writing underneath: “Christ! What an age!” Read it all.

The traditional family is dead. Or at least it is for the tens of thousands of people who are choosing to go online to find the parent of their child.

Men and women are finding each other on what look like dating sites in order to have a baby through artificial insemination (AI). Within a platonic relationship, they then share the child without a binding legal agreement.

Co-Parents.co.uk, was begun by Franz Sof in 2008 when he wanted to meet someone he could bring up a child with. The site now has 10,000 members. This website and others like it also caters for those who, rather than looking for someone to “co-parent” with, are looking for a sperm donor, but want to meet him first.

Read it all (requires subscription).

This streamlining should not be taken as a sign of decline. All of the “optimized” languages remain full languages in every sense of the term, as we know from the fact that I’m writing in one: An Old English speaker who heard modern English would consider it confounding and “broken.” That any language has all irregular verbs, eight tones or female tables is ultimately a matter of accident, not design.

Hopefully, the languages lost amid all of this change will at least be described and, with modern tools, recorded for posterity. We may regret the eclipse of a world where 6,000 different languages were spoken as opposed to just 600, but there is a silver lining in the fact that ever more people will be able to communicate in one language that they use alongside their native one.

After all, what’s peculiar about the Babel tale is the idea of linguistic diversity as a curse, not the idea of universal comprehension as a blessing. The future promises both a goodly amount of this diversity and ever more mutual comprehension, as many languages become easier to pick up, in their spoken versions, than they once were. A future dominated by English won’t be a linguistic paradise, in short, but it won’t be a linguistic Armageddon either.

Read it all.