(Please note that the first three sections of this letter to the editor WERE published in the Church Times, but not the last two; it is included here with Ian’s kind permission–KSH.

From the Revd Dr Ian Paul–First, no ‘senior members’ of the group resigned. You do mention two archdeacons, who might be styled ‘senior’ in terms of ministry, but they had no seniority within the group. The committee and leadership of EGGS were unanimously agreed on the proposed changes.

Secondly, the group was in no sense ‘split’. Of those who did vote against, a number agreed with the statement, but were not sure whether the timing was right. The fact that you can name only three people who have resigned from a membership of around 140 gives some indication of how united the group was.

Thirdly, you quote Ven Gavin Collins claiming that the new statement was a ‘very narrow formulation’. In fact, as was mentioned repeatedly in the debate at which Gavin was present, the statement did nothing more than restate the current teaching of the Church of England in its canon law and liturgy, and was in line with the stated view of the Anglican Communion. It is a strange day when an archdeacon can believe that the current teaching of the Church is ‘very narrow’.

Jayne Ozanne asks ‘Who is speaking for young people?’ She might want to note that members of the group include leaders from the churches with the largest youth ministries in the Church of England, as set out in an answer given during Synod questions that immediately preceded the EGGS meeting.

The fact that the vote was so clear offered an example to the Church of people finding unity in the truth, just as Jesus prayed in John 17. Many in the Church of England are desperate to hear someone in leadership in the Church actually speak up for the Church’s understanding of marriage and sexuality, and they will be heartened to read of the clarity of the EGGS position.

IAN PAUL
Member of General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council
Nottingham

Ian Paul’s full letter to the Editor of the Church Times in response to the misleading previous article on some C of E #evangelicals and the #marriage statement https://t.co/5UwKzW0jt9 #anglican #theology #sex #synod #ethics #religion #uk (picture: Ian Paul) pic.twitter.com/O8DqUnUJRS

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) July 23, 2019

Read it all (registration).

A tip of the hat to Lutheran blogger Dan Skogen, who highlighted this exchange. The church historically teaches – and most Christians today would reiterate – that God loves everyone and seeks their best interest. But does that love mean that Hell is, as Egensteiner asserted, empty?

Even among many liberal mainline Protestant luminaries, the doctrine of Hell is taken seriously today more so than in the past two generations. In 2008, the liberal Christian Century hosted a symposium on Hell. As IRD’s Mark Tooley reported somewhat surprisingly, most of the respondents seemed to believe in it. This stands in stark contrast to early and mid-20^th Century liberal Protestants who rejected the existence of Hell outright.

This old Protestant liberalism was embodied by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. Tooley notes that Spong gained celebrity in the 1980s writing books denying supernatural Christianity and insisting rationalism was the only way to “save” the faith for younger people. Meanwhile, his Episcopal Diocese of Newark lost nearly half its members under his watch, and the seminars he taught in retirement attracted only the elderly.

Rarely today do Tooley or I encounter liberal Protestants similar to Spong who are under 60 (Egensteiner turns 62 next month). “Modernist” views are now passé, and liberal Protestants under age 50 typically believe in an afterlife and sometimes even Hell.

But Hell isn’t just about the afterlife. As I reported last year on an Anglican workshop that addressed preaching on the subject, the Doctrine of Hell has consequences today for the living including Christology, evangelism, human dignity and our “tone in life”.

Read it all.

“Hell is empty and we should have no concern about our eternal fate.”

So why be a #Christian? What’s the point?#religion #lutheran #elca https://t.co/WaVSfPXrOm

— Dennis Lennox (@dennislennox) July 23, 2019

Marijuana’s role in the health care universe has grown exponentially over the past few years. Currently, 33 U.S. states have legalized the use of medical marijuana, and more and more states are considering making it legal for recreational purposes as well. As cannabis becomes more accessible, many people are turning to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) products to treat health issues like rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (the aches and pains of arthritis).

Unfortunately, because cannabis remains illegal and classified as a Schedule 1 drugunder federal law (defined as being of no medical use), there has been a troublinglack of scientific and medical research on the effectiveness of cannabis treatments. This dearth of evidence-based data has left many health care providers unable to counsel their patients on everything from whether a cannabis treatment could be effective for their condition, to what dosages are appropriate, to how cannabis might interact with their other medications or health conditions.

This lack of information hasn’t stopped patients from exploring the use of cannabis treatments on their own, as marijuana becomes available, if not ubiquitous, in more states. The online arthritis patient community CreakyJoints, which I co-founded, recently conducted a studyof its ArthritisPower registry and found that more than half of arthritis patients have tried marijuana or cannabidiol products for medical purposes. However, the study also found that only two-thirds of these patients reported telling their health care provider about their use. So many patients are flying completely blind while trying cannabis related treatments without any awareness by, or input from, their doctor.

Read it all.

If Marijuana is the cure, where’s the research? https://t.co/iklBP5a2VY via @SethSaidSo #THC #CBD “The most valuable information is not publicly available to inform doctors about what might or might not work for patients” #ClinicalResearch #LetsBeBlunt

— ClinicalBid (@ClinicalBid) July 23, 2019

The best reason to doubt Yang’s story is contained in productivity statistics, which measure the output of the gainfully employed and which traditionally rise rapidly during periods of technological change — because even if workers are losing their jobs to the spinning jenny or the automobile, other workers should be increasing their productivity with the new technology’s assistance.

Lately this hasn’t been happening. Instead productivity growth in the developed world has decelerated over the last decade. To quote a recent summary, in mature economies “labor productivity growth rates halved from an average annual rate of 2.3 percent in the period 2000-2007 to 1.2 percent from 2010-2017.” Combine that with the slow, consistent trend back toward full employment in the American economy — again, not what you’d expect if the labor market were being upended by technology — and the story of our times looks more like stasis than automated revolution, more like the stagnation discerned by a number of heterodox thinkers than the acceleration of conventional wisdom.

Yang and I wrangled about just this question when he graciously came on our Op-Ed podcast, The Argument. He suggested that what we’re seeing in the statistics is that automation for now is just holding down wages and shunting people out of industrial occupations and into low-paying service sector work … and that come a few more breakthroughs and the next recession, when companies will inevitably seek roboticized efficiency, you’ll start to get far more significant disruption.

He could be right; he’s certainly right that automation has had some impact on middle-class jobs, influencing the populism roiling Western politics. But it seems equally plausible that the real state of things is captured by my colleague Neal Boudette’s update on the status of the self-driving car, long portrayed as a technological breakthrough poised to throw lots of people — from long-distance truckers to cabdrivers — out of work.

Read it all.

The future will be delayed. Maybe.https://t.co/hTchYuXh4u

— Tom Maguire (@Tom_Maguire) July 23, 2019

Winkler completed an MA in English Literature in 2013, at the same time that I was working on my doctorate on Shakespeare, which makes the two of us grad school contemporaries. I understand well the myopic feminist perspective of English departments, of how students are often trained to read specifically for attitudes of unfairness towards women in order to confirm the narrative of women’s victimization. I also understand how the “male gaze,” men’s sexualization of women, is treated punitively, as a dirtiness within men that can cause them to dehumanize women and which can lead to cruelty. And of course this is sometimes tragically true.

But what troubles me is that women commonly fail to appreciate the internal struggle men have with their sexual instincts, and instead condemn them for having these instincts at all. In other words, consciousness raising feminism rightly asserts that men shouldn’t treat women like objects for their use, but it does so while being unconscious of men’s humanity, and as a consequence, both minimizes and punishes the male sexual instinct that causes men to see women sexually in spite of men’s civilizing efforts not to.

What contemporary feminism fails to adequately grapple with is nature itself, and as a result, feminist attitudes towards men, and particularly towards male sexuality, are compassionless and punitive (not to mention humourless—and human sexuality is so often very funny!). With a blind spot for men’s experiences, consciousness raising feminist attitudes towards male sexual energy are unlikely to inspire mutual respect, and instead work to engender resentment, anxiety, and unhappiness.

As I grow older, I’m becoming increasingly aware of and sympathetic to the internal struggle between powerful sexual instincts and self-possession that most men contend with every day. Many women have an active libido, but in my experience the vast majority of women think about sex much less than men do. Women: imagine what it would be like to think about sex a lot, then quadruple what you’ve just imagined, and now you’re in the ballpark of the average man. It would be exhausting, I can only imagine, to constantly have to assert one’s own self-restraint over an appetite that gnaws at one’s imagination from moment to moment. But to be made to feel somehow polluted for the appetite itself, the appetite that men most usually successfully control and deny would be almost intolerable.

Read it all.

“What feminism doesn’t understand, and probably doesn’t want to understand because it might create compassion for male sexuality, is the internal struggle of men against their own appetites.” https://t.co/Rg3uWMQUW4

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) July 23, 2019

Local non-profit combating global water crisis loses co-founder in accidental drowning. Water Mission says Molly Greene died in the Bahamas today. #chsnews pic.twitter.com/FkH4uAbZf0

— Lisa Weismann (@LisaLive5) July 18, 2019

From here: Dearest friends and family,

Last week, our family was devastated by the sudden loss of our precious Molly. The last few days have seemed like an eternity and have been the most difficult experience our family has ever faced. We are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of love from so many dear friends whose hearts are also broken. Molly was a beautiful soul who lived a life full of purpose and calling, and her sudden departure has broken many hearts.

As you may know, our family was in the Bahamas when this tragedy took Molly from us. The many requirements associated with bringing Molly’s body back to the United States are causing delays in being able to announce when the visitation and funeral will take place. Our understanding is that the earliest we will be able to move forward with these items would be this coming Sunday and Monday, but there could be additional delays. As soon as we have confirmation, we will share additional details.

Understanding that many people who would like to attend Molly’s funeral may not be able to join us on short notice, we plan to have a separate celebration of life event in the next four to six weeks. More details for this will follow soon as well.

In the interim, we (all Greene and Gardner family members) would welcome the opportunity to connect with close friends and family through phone or email. Additionally, we would welcome visitors at Water Mission, 1150 Kinzer Street, Bldg. 1605, North Charleston, SC 29405. All of us plan to be on hand during the following times:

• Tuesday, July 23, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
• Wednesday, July 24, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Friday, July 26, from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Greene family has experienced a tragedy like this. While reliving this nightmare has been doubly heartbreaking, the Lord has been using our previous experience to help us walk through this dark night of the soul. We would like to share this with the broader public in the hopes that it might help others to also experience healing. Following are thoughts Molly wrote a few years ago on the death of our son, John Christian:

When the Worst Happens: Finding God’s Purpose Amidst the Pain – by Molly Greene and Pringle Franklin (with excerpts from George Greene, III)

We cannot thank you enough for covering our family in prayer during this challenging time. We need these prayers both now and as we look to the future, and we are so grateful for your love. Molly was deeply loved by many because she deeply loved many. Trying to understand what life looks like without her has revealed to us how heartbroken we actually are. Having expressed our grief, we know that this world is not our final resting place, and we take comfort in knowing that Molly has been welcomed into the presence of Jesus and has heard the words, “Well done good and faithful servant.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

With much love and gratitude,

George C Greene III, PE, PhD
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Holy and Mighty One, whose beloved Son Jesus Christ blessed the pure in heart: We offer thanks for the life and teachings of John Cassian that draw us to a discipline of holy living for the sake of thy reign. Call us to turn the gaze of the eyes of our soul always toward thee, that we may abide in thy love, shown to us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit is one God, living and true, to the ages of ages. Amen.

True knowledge is found only among those genuinely worshiping God. † St John Cassian the Roman pic.twitter.com/3KEUm67Chg

— Orthodox Faith (@since33) January 6, 2017

Lord, be thou within me, to strengthen me; without me, to keep me; above me, to protect me; beneath me, to uphold me; before me, to direct me; behind me, to keep me from straying; round about me, to defend me. Blessed be thou, our Father for ever and ever.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said to them, “Take heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

–Mark 4:21-34

Mid-sized churches — defined as worshipping communities of between 20 and 60 — have been overlooked by the national church institutions, the secretary-general, William Nye, said this month.

Speaking before a panel convened earlier this month to discuss the beauty and the challenges associated with the “middle third”, Mr Nye described how, “without meaning to, a lot of the time, we, the national church institutions, just default to thinking about bigger churches, because a lot of people’s picture of the norm of the church is a vicar and about 100 people on a Sunday morning.

“We have overlooked this middle third. Lots of staff at Church House, lots of bishops, come up through bigger churches, worship in bigger churches; bishops have led bigger churches.”

There was a need to think more about how national programmes might work in churches of this size, he said. Some did not connect “terribly well”, such as planting and the creation of resource churches. Others, such as digital campaigns, did. “We are trying to get away from the idea that we are interested only in planting and replicating churches of 300 people.”

Read it all.

We are neglecting mid-sized churches, Nye admits: Parish churches needed to be aware that large churches were often drawing from areas the size of dozens of Anglican parishes. https://t.co/c239Sn7mDp

— Fr Simon Robinson SMMS (@RevSimonR) July 22, 2019

The cultural Left in the United States now dares to use the term “religious liberty” only with scare quotes.

How did this happen?

I believe that conservatives in the United States have vastly underestimated the reality and comprehensiveness of the challenge we face. All of us see parts, but it takes concentrated attention, a devotion to history, and a serious reckoning with ideas to see the whole—the vastness of our crisis. We see religious liberty denied when a cake baker in Colorado experiences sustained efforts to put him out of business, or worse, accompanied nationwide by florists and photographers and a host of others. We see the Fire Chief of Atlanta, Georgia removed because he dared to teach a biblical pattern of human sexuality, and then dared to put his convictions into print—primarily for his own church. We see Christian schools and ministries confront unprecedented challenges across several fronts and we see a continual effort to coerce Christians to surrender to the new regime of sexual rules, gender identity, intersectionality, and identity politics. The enemies of religious liberty are playing hardball, and we were warned.

Chai Feldblum, formerly of Georgetown University Law Center and later appointed by President Barack Obama to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, over a decade ago admitted in a public statement that religious liberty would have to give way to the new sexual or erotic liberty. This new sexual liberty was invented by moral revolutionaries, enshrined by the U.S. Supreme Court, and now used as a weapon of cultural and legal warfare. Then, looking to the day when same-sex marriage would be legalized and religious liberty would be inevitably denied or redefined, Feldblum said: “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win… Sexual liberty should win in most cases. There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases sexual liberty should win because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States, President Obama’s Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, was asked if the legalization of same-sex marriage might require a Christian college to be coerced into compliance on the question, for example, of married student housing. The Solicitor General responded candidly: “It will be an issue.” Indeed, it will.

It will be an issue for every Christian school, college, or university. It will be an issue for every Christian in the professions, in business, in public service, in uniform. It will be an issue for us all, and particularly for our children and their children and their children’s children.

Read it all.

This essay by ⁦@albertmohler⁩ is outstanding. An important truth therein: Unless there’s a God, there’s no intelligible ground for liberty as a basic good. Liberty assumes a particular telos. Remove God and all that’s left of liberty is choice. https://t.co/Gpsf8ZJN0D

— Andrew T. Walker (@andrewtwalk) July 19, 2019

An international human rights NGO has submitted research and data to the International Criminal Court contending that the standard for genocide has now been reached when it comes to the massacres of Christian farming communities in Nigeria by Fulani militants.

The Jubilee Campaign, which advocates on behalf of religious minorities across the globe and successfully petitioned the ICC to indict Boko Haram for their killings across northeastern Nigeria, submitted its new report “Nigeria: The Genocide is Loading” to the ICC’s investigative offices in Hague last week.

The report documents the increasing scale and severity of Fulani militant attacks against predominantly Christian farming communities in Nigeria and chronicles at least 52 Fulani militant attacks between the start of 2019 and June 12.

“Nearly every single day, I wake up with text messages from partners in Nigeria, such as this morning: ‘Herdsmen stab 49-year-old farmer to death in Ogan,’” human rights lawyer and Jubilee Campaign Director Ann Buwalda said during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C, this month.

Read it all.

Fulani killings of Nigerian Christians meets standard for ‘genocide,’ Jubilee Campaign says https://t.co/g1bg09poWd

— The Christian Post (@ChristianPost) July 22, 2019

State Representative Ron Travis, a Republican, said it was impossible to determine online whether a person had the “care of souls,” as the law states.

“Just because you pay $50 and get a certificate doesn’t mean you’re an ordained minister,” Mr. Travis said, according to WATE-TV.

The opposition in Tennessee reflects a clash with a growing trend in the United States to privatize marriage and personalize weddings by distancing them from the state or established religions.

Ministers ordained online can officiate at weddings in 48 states, with the exception of Virginia and some parts of Pennsylvania, according to the Universal Life Church Monastery, which says it has ordained more than 20 million ministers nationwide. But rules can vary by county, as in New York State.

Read it all.

Ministers ordained online can no longer solemnize weddings in Tennessee, a new law said. A lawsuit is challenging that. https://t.co/Z7mZp4HCGD

— NYT National News (@NYTNational) July 20, 2019

British betting companies and football clubs are “luring” hundreds of thousands of African children into an illegal gambling craze that Kenya’s government says is “destroying” their lives.

Using techniques banned in the UK, the companies appeal to youngsters by using cartoon characters and free branded merchandise. At a British company’s betting shops in the Nairobi slums, The Sunday Times witnessed children as young as 14 gambling freely, in breach of Kenyan law.

Tracey Crouch, who resigned as sports minister in protest at the government’s lack of action over gambling, said she was “deeply concerned” at the revelations, adding: “It is reminiscent of the way that tobacco companies are seeking new markets among young people in Africa.”

Top English football clubs, which have millions of fans in Africa, are closely involved in the promotional efforts. Arsenal sent its former star, Sol Campbell, to Nairobi for children’s coaching sessions with SportPesa, a Kenyan betting company that is its African sponsor. Hull City players went to a Nairobi shanty town, where they handed out SportPesa-branded wristbands and football strips to schoolchildren.

Read it all (subscription).

How British betting companies – and Premiership football clubs – get African children gamblinghttps://t.co/c6Wo3hXFjw

— Andrew Gilligan (@mragilligan) July 14, 2019

The country undoubtedly needs more computer scientists, medics and engineers – but as a society surely not at the expense of the humanities, whose essence is captured in the name. A society that has forgotten its history, is ignorant of its poetry and most of whose citizens have no understanding of foreign languages or culture is withering. An organisation staffed only by those with instrumental skills will have little sense of its purpose or social place, which is the ultimate guarantor of success. The best scientists know they need their humanity colleagues – in a firm as much as a college.

It is not blinkered university humanities lecturers who are to blame for this intensifying bias – as suggested in a recent article in the Economist. They are committed scholars ready to do whatever they can to make their subjects relevant and accessible. But students will only value the humanities if society values them. And that means nurturing the organisations that have a sufficiently long-term sense of themselves and their purpose to be able to recruit from across the academic disciplines.

That in turn requires a vision of the good society – one reason why increasingly I have come to characterise Brexit as a cultural civil war. There is no prospect that Brexit can improve the deal for our young, economically or culturally. Public finances and organisations alike will be under more pressure. The language of very rightwing politicians will become the new common sense. Drug use will intensify at the bottom – and the cultural ballast in our society, loving history or Shakespeare for their own sakes, will decline.

The young sense this: it is why they voted so overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, and would do so in greater numbers today.

Read it all.

Opinion: Turning our back on studying history fits with a society that’s losing its common purpose (via @guardian) https://t.co/z8tfjRv4V1 #history #study

— BBC History Magazine (@HistoryExtra) July 22, 2019

She pledged to work with churches to help they understand what those words would mean and how they should relate to the communities around them. And in a week where it was revealed that the number of people who call themselves a Christian is declining, the bishop-designate said that there is still a hunger for the spiritual.

“I don’t agree that society’s getting more secular,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that people don’t have faith or curiosity or a gap in their lives where religion might be, that they aren’t living with huge questions.

“I think that is an open door because the churches have got the tools and the ability to be able to connect with those people. That it’s a big challenge; that’s what we are going to need to be working on.”

And as part of this, she is keen to see the borough’s churches get more involved in social action.

“I know that 70% of our churches are involved in social action outreach,” she said. “That means that 30% aren’t.

Read it all.

‘The Venerable Graham said that for her first year as bishop, she intends to visit as many churches as she can and encourage the people that she meets there.’

Read more via @phil_creighton for @WokinghamPaper: https://t.co/xcCsVox3ik

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) July 22, 2019

Almighty God, whose blessed Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of body and mind, and called her to be a witness of his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by thy grace we may be healed of all our infirmities and know thee in the power of his endless life; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.

Today is #MaryMagdalene‘s feast, find more about one of #Delacroix‘s masterpieces here ☛ https://t.co/osImNlOse0 pic.twitter.com/sNSBh9Q6uV

— Musée du Louvre (@MuseeLouvre) July 22, 2016

O God, who through thy Son Jesus Christ hast promised a blessing to the meek upon earth, take from us all pride and vanity, boasting and forwardness; and give us the true courage that shows itself by gentleness, the true wisdom that shows itself by simplicity, and the true power that shows itself by modesty; for Christ’s sake.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

And others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

–Mark 4:18-20

Rare is it that Dabo Swinney issues threats. The Clemson football coach dances with his players and takes his assistants on annual skiing trips. Fear is not part of his playbook.

But Swinney makes an exception when it comes to safeties coach Mickey Conn, whose oldest son, Brodey, plays on the same football and baseball teams as Swinney’s youngest son, Clay.

“Dabo says, ‘If you don’t go to the games, I’m going to fire you,’” Conn said.

And so Conn goes to the games. He values his employment. He then returns to the Tigers’ facility grateful to work for a boss who emphasizes the importance of family time.

Read it all.

Clemson’s Dabo Swinney to assistants: Spend time with your own kids, or you’re fired https://t.co/Yc3HS1LRzi via @postandcourier

— GingerWGodfree (@GingerWGodfree) July 21, 2019

As of this month, the world’s population is 7.63 billion, according to the United Nations, which celebrates World Population Day today. More than half of all people around the globe (3.97 billion) live in just seven countries, according to the UN’s estimates. China has the world’s largest population (1.42 billion), followed by India (1.35 billion). The next five most populous nations – the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria – together have fewer people than India.

As recently as 2014, half the world’s population was concentrated in just six countries – the same nations as above, with the exception of Nigeria. Recent population growth, however, has been faster in the rest of the world than in these six nations, meaning that the top six now hold slightly less than half (49.4%) of the world’s people. Including Nigeria’s nearly 200 million people puts the world’s seven most populous countries at 52% of the global population.

The demographic future for the U.S. and the world looks very different than it did in the recent past. Growth from 1950 to 2010 was rapid — the global population nearly tripled, and the U.S. population doubled. However, population growth in future decades is projected to be significantly slower and is expected to tilt strongly to the oldest age groups, both globally and in the U.S.

Read it all.

More than half of all people around the globe (3.97 billion) live in just seven countries: 🇨🇳 🇮🇳 🇺🇸 🇮🇩 🇧🇷 🇵🇰 🇳🇬https://t.co/4z8KyU6lxe pic.twitter.com/8Mqv9bLaix

— Pew Research Global (@pewglobal) July 21, 2019

“I always say,” Karen Armstrong admits with a conspiratorial grin, “that God bought me that place.” She is referring to the north London house she paid for with the proceeds of her series of bestsellers on religion — and Islam in particular.

If there was one specific book that underpinned the foundations of her Islington home, it was her short history of Islam. Published in 2000, this was perfectly timed for the west’s agonising over religion and the potential for a clash of civilisations sparked by the September 11 attacks the following year.

“I never saw the inside of a library” after that, she tells me as we are steered to our table. Instead, she was on the radio nonstop, “talking about Islam ” — as indeed she has been virtually ever since. She sees it as a civic duty to defend the religion — against both the misconceptions of non-Muslims and against what she sees as the corrupting influence of certain strains of Islamic theology, notably Saudi Wahhabism.

It is, Armstrong says of the latter, “as if a tiny sect in the [American] Bible belt had petrodollars and international approval to export their form of Christianity over the rest of the world.”

Read it all(subscription).

Karen Armstrong: ‘Religion is a matter of imagination’ https://t.co/AMXV4nD1Hg

— Financial Times (@FT) July 19, 2019

“Worry is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength — [It’s] carrying two days at once. It’s moving into tomorrow ahead of time….[quoting someone else] worrying does not take away tomorrow’s grief; it takes away today’s strength.”

-Corrie Ten Boom, Reflections of God’s Glory, pp. 36-37

Corrie ten Boom hid Jews from arrest and deportation during the German occupation of the Netherlands. In resisting Nazi persecution, ten Boom acted in concert with her religious beliefs, her family experience, and the Dutch res.. Check out for more: https://t.co/1SLfDneDAy pic.twitter.com/XHrbK3TcdY

— History Lovers Club (@historylvrsclub) June 3, 2019

Grant to us, O Lord, the royalty of inward happiness, and the serenity which comes from living close to thee: Daily renew in us the sense of joy, and let the eternal spirit of the Father dwell in our souls and bodies, filling us with light and grace, so that, bearing about with us the infection of a good courage, we may be diffusers of life, and may meet all ills and cross accidents with gallant and high-hearted happiness, giving thee thanks always for all things.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee,
my soul thirsts for thee;
my flesh faints for thee,
as in a dry and weary land where no water is.
So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary,
beholding thy power and glory.
Because thy steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise thee.
So I will bless thee as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands and call on thy name.

–Psalm 63:1-4

Though the Anglican Church in Canada last week failed to amend its canon to sanction same-sex marriages, in the wake of the narrow vote, dioceses have opted to continue with them anyway.

The amendment, first passed in 2016, required a two-thirds majority vote among lay delegates, clergy, and bishops at two triennial general synods in a row. While it met the threshold among lay and clergy (80.9% and 73.2%) during this year’s synod, the bishops’ vote last Friday fell just short of two-thirds (62.2%).

On Monday, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, the Primate of Canada, read a statement to the delegation saying the bishops “are not of one mind” on the issue, but that “we are walking together in a way which leaves room for individual dioceses and jurisdictions of our church to proceed with same-sex marriage,” according to Anglican Planet.

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The Anglican Church in Canada failed to amend its canon to sanction same-sex marriages, but dioceses have opted to continue with them anyway https://t.co/HUl76F2LE0

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 20, 2019

For several weeks prior to the scheduled lift-off of Apollo 11 back in July, 1969, the pastor of our church, Dean Woodruff, and I had been struggling to find the right symbol for the first lunar landing.

We wanted to express our feeling that what man was doing in this mission transcended electronics and computers and rockets.

Dean often speaks at our church, Webster Presbyterian, just outside of Houston, about the many meanings of the communion service.

“One of the principal symbols,” Dean says, “is that God reveals Himself in the common elements of everyday life.” Traditionally, these elements are bread and wine–common foods in Bible days and typical products of man’s labor.

One day while I was at Cape Kennedy working with the sophisticated tools of the space effort, it occurred to me that these tools were the typical elements of life today.

I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon, symbolizing the thought that God was revealing Himself there too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man.

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I was today years old when I learned the first meal eaten on the moon was the bread and wine of Holy Communion. https://t.co/QnmiOiaxnX

— Donnie Wilkinson (@donniewilkinson) July 19, 2019

Declaring “a state of impaired communion” over the issue of same-sex marriage, the bishops of the Diocese of the Arctic have moved to distance themselves from the actions of other dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada.

“We are grateful that the vote to change the marriage canon failed but saving the marriage canon did not save the biblical understanding of marriage. We are saddened that so many bishops have defied General Synod and have announced an independent decision to approve same-sex marriage,” the bishops said, in a letter to the diocese. The letter was signed by Diocesan Bishop David W. Parsons and the three suffragan bishops of the diocese: Joey Royal, Annie Ittoshat, and Lucy Netser.

A resolution that would have paved the way to allowing same-sex marriage with the permission of diocesan bishops failed by two votes to get the necessary two-thirds majority in the order of bishops at the Church’s triennial General Synod, which concluded July 16. The resolution easily surpassed two-thirds in the order of clergy and order of the laity.

Within a day after the July 12 vote, primate-elect Linda Nicholls, in her role as outgoing Bishop of Huron, and the bishops of Ottawa, Niagara, Rupert’s Land, and Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island announced they would continue the practice of allowing priests in their dioceses to perform or bless same-sex marriages.

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Just kidding. In fact, in this chapter our favorite Episcopal priest-turned writer [Robert Farrar Capon] argues the opposite: that an all-redeeming, perfectly loving God made known in Christ is indeed compatible both with harsh summers and their spiritual counterpart: hell. After drawing witty (and surprisingly believable) comparisons between the sweaty season and the lake of fire, he deftly explains why a robust theology of hell is indispensable in Christian doctrine. Check out this quasi-Lewisian explanation from the chapter “The Porch”:

the neat spirit of hell is a championing of the right so profound that it produces a permanent unwillingness to forgive, an eternal conviction that wrong should be prevented whenever possible and punished whenever not, but this it must never under any circumstances be absolved … That is the hell of hell. That’s why it’s presided over by the rightest angel who ever lived. That’s why it’s the least human place in the universe. And that’s why, though earth can sometimes indeed be heaven, it can never quite manage to be pure hell: there is always the chance that out of pure feeblemindedness if nothing else we might just drop the subject of being right.

We ask that God’s will may be done “as in heaven so on earth,” and we follow that by praying to be forgiven only as we forgive. The link we establish between earth and heaven, you see, is a human link and the virtue we attach most immediately to his will is a human virtue: mercy top to bottom, here as there; pardon all around, there as here. Heaven is not the home of the good but of the forgiven forgivers; hell contains only unpardoned unpardoners. Neither place, of course, is inhabited by anything but unpardonable types: it’s just that everybody in heaven, God himself included, has decided to die to the question of who’s wrong; whereas nobody in hell can even shut up about who’s right. Hell is where the finally, unrepentantly righteous and the finally, impenitently wicked have literally forever to enjoy their final, unendable war.

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NEW POST The God Days of Summerhttps://t.co/kTvgB99vRQ

— Mockingbird (@mockingbirdmin) July 2, 2019