Those are the first words in a tweet thread from Becket attorney Lori Windham, and she’s right. This week Becket filed a cert petition in Sharonell Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Fulton is appealing from a Third Circuit Court of Appeals opinion holding that Philadelphia did not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment when it took punitive actions against Catholic Social Services because, in the words of the cert petition, “as a Catholic agency, CSS cannot provide written endorsements for same-sex couples which contradict its religious teachings on marriage.” Philadelphia took this action in spite of the fact that “CSS’s beliefs about marriage haven’t prevented anyone from fostering. ” As Becket explains:

Philadelphia has a diverse array of foster agencies, and not a single same-sex couple approached CSS about becoming a foster parent between its opening in 1917 and the start of this case in 2018. Despite this history, after learning through a newspaper article that CSS wouldn’t perform home studies for same-sex couples if asked, the City stopped allowing foster children to be placed with any family endorsed by CSS. This means that even though no same-sex couples had asked to work with the Catholic Church, the foster families that actually chose to work with the Church cannot welcome new children into their homes at a time when Philadelphia has an admittedly “urgent” need for more foster parents.

As is the case with multiple modern religious liberty cases, the issue isn’t whether LGBT individuals are excluded from the relevant market, industry, or program but whether the state may use its power to enforce ideological and religious conformity. Just as a ruling for Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop meant that customers could still get their cakes, and Christians could still retain their rights of conscience, a ruling for CSS here would mean that LGBT families could still foster, and Catholics would be able to uphold church teaching.

Moreover, the facts of the case demonstrate that Philadelphia’s intolerance doesn’t just harm the Catholic Church, it harms the very people the foster program is designed to help.

Read it all.

A ruling for Catholic Social Services would mean that LGBT families could still foster, and Catholics would still be able to uphold church teaching. Rule against them, and the court drives CSS from fostering kids: https://t.co/bKF3Vm87fU

— David French (@DavidAFrench) July 26, 2019

EFAC Uganda was launched at All Saints Cathedral Kampala on Thursday July 20, attended by over 50 people among whom were bishops, clergy, leaders of evangelical churches in Uganda, and the leaders of Africa Centre for Apologetics in East Africa, LIFE Ministry (Lay Involvement For Evangelism) and other Para-church organisations.

The origins of the event go back to Jerusalem.

Bishop Emeritus Dunstan Bukenya led a delegation of 230 people to a GAFCON meeting there where he visited the EFAC desk. EFAC invited him for a Training Conference in Nairobi. Soon after, he presented a proposal to the House of Bishops (of which he is a member, representing retired Bishops).

On 20 February 2019, the House of Bishops resolved to allow EFAC to be born in the Church of Uganda. The Bishops appointed the Rt Rev Henry Katumba Tamale, the Bishop of West Buganda, to lead this new body.

At the launch, the Primate, Archbishop Stanley Ntagali emphasised that the Church of Uganda has been ‘blessed for many years by the ministry of EFAC’ through its consistent focus on the biblical foundations of historic Anglicanism, which has paved the way for many in the Church of Uganda to understand the need for the birth of GAFCON.

“EFAC has had a long-time commitment to the evangelical faith and we’re grateful for its support in deepening this understanding of our faith in Uganda,” he said. “This helped us to understand what was happening when others in the Anglican Communion, including entire Dioceses and Provinces, adopted unbiblical doctrine that is contrary to our historic faith as Anglicans.

Read it all (subscription).

Archbishop Stanley Ntagali bids farewell at Namirembe Cathedral today. As he retires we thank him for his ministry and completion of Church house.🙏🏿 pic.twitter.com/NUhFGopvps

— Apollo N Makubuya (@ANMakubuya) June 23, 2019

God has been good to Holy Cross Anglican Church, the parish I serve in the Milwaukee area. We routinely have visitors who are looking and seeking a deeper walk with Jesus. We’ve even had a whole family who converted to the faith. Holy Cross used to be St. Edmund’s Episcopal and left the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee in 2008.[1] A recent visitor who used to be Roman Catholic, and then went through a few Protestant denominations, asked why I wear a collar. My normal response is that the collar is part of my uniform. I also tell people that I wear the collar to keep me in check and in line. Often the collar works!

Her husband and two adult sons love our church, but for the wife, it has been a hard transition. Many questions, many wounds, many hard issues. This family’s journey has left many question and fears. One fear is that we look too Roman, and all that Rome does is wrong including the collar.

I struggle sometimes about the collar, when I should wear it. When I am on my way home from church and going to the store, do I take the tab off? Or do I keep it in? I remember the first time I wore the collar the day I was ordained a deacon. It felt weird and I thought everyone was staring at me….

Read it all.

This new piece from Fr. Patrick Malone is worth sharing with a friend.https://t.co/Q4nNCkjOvb

— NorthAm Anglican (@NorthAmAnglican) July 26, 2019

A church deep in La Dina, San Salvador is holding a service with a difference: many of the men here used to be in a gang.

Eben-ezer is a functioning church but also runs a rehabilitation project for men who repent their past gang life.

Watch it all (about 3 3/4 minutes).

On a high-summer morning in Oxford city centre, entering the calm, cool interior of the church of St Michael at the North Gate offers relief from both the crowds and the heat. A moment later, through the tiny souvenir shop, comes Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at the University of Oxford and author of many books — most recently a biography of the nation’s favourite Tudor, Thomas Cromwell.

MacCulloch is a star in the history world, knighted in 2012 for services to scholarship. His is a familiar face from TV series including A History of Christianity (and its accompanying book) and Sex and the Church. But today he’s not talking about Cromwell, he’s introducing me to his favourite hobby: a “church crawl”.

For the uninitiated, this is like a pub crawl, but we are refreshing ourselves by visiting places of Anglican worship. It has been MacCulloch’s passion since his “very happy” childhood in rural Suffolk. His father was a village parson and would drive young Diarmaid around to look at churches. Now 67, MacCulloch reckons he has visited “6,000 or 7,000 so far — and several more than once”.

Oxford has an extraordinary number of churches. It is also home to St Cross, a postgraduate institution where MacCulloch has been a fellow for 25 years, and which is within an easy walk of them all. Today he has picked three for us, beginning with St Michael’s because it is the official city church of Oxford, and lies “at the North Gate”, one of the lost entrances to the early walled city.

Read it all (subscription).

Exploring churches with Diarmaid MacCulloch: ‘I love a locked door’ https://t.co/ZxyIaN4c82

— Financial Times (@FT) July 26, 2019

The Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG) planned to pressure a bishop to withdraw pastoral support from a survivor of abuse because it might prejudice a claim, redacted documents seen by the Church Times suggest.

The survivor, Julian Whiting, alleges that he was abused by a pupil and two housemasters of the Blue Coat School in Birmingham. Neither adult was a cleric. Several years later, in 2012, Mr Whiting approached the Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Revd David Urquhart, who is President of Blue Coat, for pastoral help.

In a letter to a redacted recipient dated April 2013, the casualty-claims employee for EIG in Manchester states: “I feel we may need you to help persuade the Bishop of Birmingham to take a less active role in his pastoral care of a claimant which we feel could have a knock-on effect to the current outstanding abuse claims we have for a Julian Whiting.”

He then says of the Blue Coat allegation: “Importantly, he [Julian Whiting] has never pursued a formal claim. There has been a lot of email traffic, but the position is that until the claimant properly formulates the claim, we have rightly shown little interest in the matter.

“What has recently complicated matters is that the Bishop of Birmingham in his role as Blue Coats [sic] School President has met with Whiting to hear his story. Whilst I fully understand the position taken that there is a pastoral care aspect here, my concern is that a continued dialogue with the Bishop and Whiting could prejudice the positioning we have taken in respect of the two claims.” (Mr Whiting was also pursuing a claim that, in 2009, he was groped by a church employee at a social event at Lambeth Palace.)

Read it all.

https://t.co/nL5c2ECKsC

“All agree that at most there is a hassle value and some risk around publicity.”@Ecclesiastical@churchofengland@AllchurchesT

— Gilo (@seaofcomplicity) July 26, 2019

From there:

St. Matthews, S.C. (July 23, 2019) – Immediately on the heels of The South Carolina Supreme Court on June 28,  denying the Petition for a Writ of Mandamus submitted by The Episcopal Church in South Carolina (TECSC), Judge Edgar W. Dickson promptly resumed proceedings on the related legal matters.  The hearing on the Betterments Statute issues, which had been cancelled in March when the petition for Mandamus was filed, was held today in the Calhoun County Courthouse in St. Matthews, SC.

The Betterments Statute, under South Carolina law, provides the means for a party making good faith improvements to property they believe they own, to be compensated for the value of those improvements, if a court makes a final determination that another party is the true owner.   Many of the parishes in the Diocese of South Carolina can trace their unbroken history back to the colonial era of the state. During that entire time, there has never been any question of their unencumbered title to property or legal identity.  All have proceeded throughout their history with the maintenance and improvement of their properties with these assumptions.

The motion previously filed by TECSC asked for the dismissal of the case, primarily on the basis that it had not been filed in a timely fashion and that they were not actually taking ownership of the churches but merely exercising their trust interest in the property. The Diocese maintained that the court needed to decide which, if any, of the 29 parishes agreed (acceded) to the Dennis Canon before it could decide whether this case should proceed. As to the eight parishes that TEC and TECSC concede did not agree to the Dennis Canon, Judge Dickson asked Diocesan counsel to submit proposed orders making the finding that those parishes did not accede to the Denis Canon.

The five separate opinions that constitute the Supreme Court decision resulted in a fractured ruling whose interpretation is currently under consideration by Judge Dickson.  The effort to force a particular interpretation of that decision was the essential purpose of the recent Petition for Mandamus filed by TEC and TECSC which was denied by the Supreme Court on June 28, 2019.

Judge Dickson took the motion to dismiss the Betterments case under advisement. He also ordered the parties to mediate all the issues raised in the two state lawsuits referencing the relatively recent Supreme Court order which requires mandatory mediation in civil cases.

#SouthCarolina Circuit Court Hears Arguments on Betterments Statute and Orders Mediation in Complex #episcopalchurch case https://t.co/BfbaOVKbu2 #religion #law #lowcountrylife #ethics #stewardship #history pic.twitter.com/PpA5Y1kGy9

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) July 26, 2019

Grant, O blessed Lord, that thy Church in this our day may hear anew thy call to launch out into the deep in the service of thy glorious gospel; that souls for whom thou hast died may be won for thee, to the increase of thy kingdom and the glory of thy holy name.

And all the assembly kept silence; and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brethren, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written,

”After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
I will rebuild its ruins,
and I will set it up,
that the rest of men may seek the Lord,
and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,
says the Lord, who has made these things known from of old.’

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood. For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every sabbath in the synagogues.”

–Acts 15:12-21