[John] Marsden says that this contemporary crop of teenagers is outperforming generations past in terms of academic achievement, political engagement and so on – but he is fearful about their emotional health, borne out by statistics on the prevalence of mental health issues among the young.

“The scale of the problem is massive. The issue of emotional damage is pandemic,” he tells the Guardian. “The level of anxiety is something I’ve never seen before, and I don’t know how it can be improved.”

Marsden says that much of the anxiety among parents and children springs from concern that the world is a dangerous place, with traditional “safe” authority figures no longer to be trusted. That, coupled with an infantilisation of children as pure, helpless creatures, leads parents to cosset and fret over their offspring, and demand much of the same from educational institutions.

“Part of that is a fear, in particular, of physical injury,” he says. “Of course, all reasonable parents are concerned about physical injury to a child, but if that overrides everything else then what you have instead is a kind of slow death by emotional damage which is so awful to witness.”

Read it all.

this, especially with the overblown focus on learning outcomes instead of learning for growth and engagement, flourishing, and dare I say joy? John Marsden on the ‘toxic’ parenting pandemic: ‘I’ve never seen this level of anxiety’ https://t.co/VpFvk3WsiA

— Karen Miles (@MsKarenMiles) July 23, 2019

(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