Martin is no stranger to the Midlands, having previously served as Vicar of ‘Shakespeare’s Church’ in Stratford-upon-Avon where he was also Chaplain to the Royal Shakespeare Company and as Vicar of Smethwick Old Church and Area Dean for the Black Country Deanery of Warley.

The new bishop said he is keen for the church to play a role in regenerating the Black Country.

Speaking after the service, Martin said: “I’m delighted to be joining Bishop John and the people of Dudley along with all across the Diocese of Worcester as we discover together how best to be the Church for England in this new decade. As a Black Country bishop I look forward to the church playing its part in the regeneration of Britain’s heartland in the West Midlands, and to working in partnership with all people of good will.”

Read it all.

The new Bishop of Dudley will be ordained and consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a service at Southwark Cathedral in London today: https://t.co/SMEdnA5YQF pic.twitter.com/BdToZ4MhpA

— BBC Midlands Today (@bbcmtd) January 28, 2020

Pounded by rain bombs from above and rising seas below, Charleston is among the most vulnerable cities in the South to a rapidly warming planet.

City officials estimate it may take $2 billion or more in public money to fortify Charleston against these threats — costs rooted in the rise of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Yet, amid these looming perils and costs, the city government itself has taken relatively modest steps to reduce its own carbon footprint in recent years, a Post and Courier investigation found.

Read it all.

Pounded by rain bombs from above and rising seas below, Charleston is among the most vulnerable cities in the South to a rapidly warming planet.https://t.co/5uxTHUmvTQ

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) January 26, 2020

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, former primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, will serve as assisting bishop for the diocese of Moosonee throughout 2020.

With current assistant bishop Thomas Corston retiring at the end of 2019, Hiltz took over as assisting bishop for one year starting on Jan. 1.

In this role, Hiltz is supporting Archbishop Anne Germond—currently bishop for the dioceses of Algoma and Moosonee, as well as metropolitan for the ecclesiastical province of Ontario—to help Moosonee navigate what Germond calls “a year of Holy Discernment.”

“I’m very excited to be working with [Hiltz] because he’s a man of great stature and credibility in the church,” Germond says. “He’s well-loved and well-respected. He has an incredible depth to him, both in his personal spiritual life and in the way he leads…. As Moosonee enters this new time of discernment, he is absolutely the perfect person to be working with me.”

Read it all.

Sightings, as its readers know, peers through the lens of contemporary media and culture in order to reflect on public perceptions of and approaches to religion. In the increasingly secular West, religious impulses often are found in the form of personalized spirituality, and yet the relocation of the spiritual impulse has done perhaps little to reduce the search for personal immortality. The media lately has brimmed with illustrations of the personal pursuit of immortality, which is being developed into a high art form by the Baby Boom generation.

A case in point: On September 9 of last year, “A Very Brady Renovation” debuted on HGTV. In this seven-episode series, all six surviving members of the original cast of the 1970s show “The Brady Bunch” help recreate the interior spaces of the Brady family’s fictional home—inside the real-life Studio City, California house that was used for exterior shots of the family home in the original series, which ran on ABC from 1968-74. “A Very Brady Renovation” is a perfect metaphor for my generation’s near-mastery of the art of never going away—not to mention its lust for boosting property values.

The blossoming of the “OK Boomer” meme ran almost concurrently with “A Very Brady Renovation.” The meme captured the disgust and anger felt by cohorts of the still young at a generation broadly (and sometimes accurately) characterized as insensitive, inflexible, entitled, and all too influential. Writing for the Atlantic, Andrew Ferguson noted that the meme “undammed vast, transgenerational reservoirs of grievance and self-pity, running in every direction.” Lyman Stone, also in the Atlantic, had already made a case for the assertion that “Boomers Ruined Everything,” opining that, in areas as diverse as “housing, work rules, higher education, law enforcement, and public budgeting,” “the Baby Boom generation created, advanced, or preserved policies that made American institutions less dynamic.”

Read it all.

“Memory Full: Boomers and the Art of Never Going Away”

David Gottlieb (@UChiDivinity PhD’18) explores how an aging generation is preserving its youthfulness … forever.https://t.co/C1d87k6keb #OkBoomer pic.twitter.com/ubPrUjtAYq

— Sightings: Religion in Public Life (@DivSightings) January 20, 2020

On the one hand, young adults are losing faith and leaving the Church; others are searching for meaning and belonging, and finding it in Christian communities. What is going on?

My research focuses on millen­nials, which I define as those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s: they are now in their mid-twenties to late thirties. Sociologists suggest that this cohort is not par­ticularly hostile to religion: rather, they are the inheritors of a century of religious decline. The mechanisms that reinforced a Christian world-view in the UK have been eroded, leaving most with no understanding of the basic tenets of Christianity.

Professor Grace Davie, of the Uni­­versity of Exeter, is correct: religious belief has become an option rather than an obligation — something that individuals may embrace if they are interested. But most young adults are not. They are also not interested in pretending to be something they are not. Authenticity is highly prized.

Professor David Voas, of the UCL Institute of Education, argues that, on average, people experience little change in their religious beliefs and practices once they reach their early twenties. He writes that “Church­goers in their twenties will probably continue to attend for the rest of their lives” (Features, 12 January 2018).

My research suggests, however, that millennials and “Generation Z” (those under 25) continue to explore faith for longer. Professor Jeffrey Jen­­sen Arnett coined the phrase “Emerging Adulthood” to describe the lengthening of adult identity-formation among today’s young. Many spend much of their twenties trying to work out who they are and what they believe, and so both convert and reject faith later than in former generations.

Read it all.

“Many spend much of their twenties trying to work out who they are and what they believe, and so both convert and reject faith later than in former generations.” This week, @PerrinRuth writes for us, drawing on interviews for her new book, out now https://t.co/KI4WOYzNVm

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) January 31, 2020

It was America’s enemies within that interested Shoemaker most. After the country entered World War II, the cleric addressed the nation’s cause in several sermons, eventually published in Christ and this Cause. In one of those sermons, “God and the War,” he lashed out at the nation’s immorality.

“This nation has had the greatest privileges ever given to any nation in all time. America has been God’s privileged child. But America has become a spoiled child. We have been ungrateful to the God under whom our liberties were given to us. I believe it is high time for someone to say that this war today is God’s judgment upon a godless and selfish people.”

Shoemaker did support the war effort; in his sermon, “What Are We Fighting For?” he admitted that the war was a “grim necessity,” the means by which nations would once again have the opportunity to choose democracy. But he abhorred any self-righteous cause:

“No war can ever be a clear-cut way for a Christian to express his hatred of evil. For war involves a basic confusion. All the good in the world is not ranged against all the evil. In the present war, some nations that have a great deal of evil in them are yet seeking to stand for freedom ”¦ against other nations which have a great deal of good in them but yet are presently dedicated to turning the world backwards into the darkness of enslavement.”

Read it all (emphasis mine).

We have no respect for a surgeon who goes in but does not cut deeply enough to cure nor a patient who backs out of an operation because it may hurt; yet people can go through their whole lives attending church, listening to searching exposures of human sin, without ever taking it to themselves, or meeting anyone with skill and concern enough to lay the challenge right in their own laps.

—Experiment of Faith (New York: Harper&Row, 1957), p.22 (emphasis mine)

Holy God, we thank thee for the vision of Samuel Shoemaker, who labored for the renewal of all people: Grant, we pray, that we may follow his example to help others find salvation through the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Episcopal Church also commemorates Samuel Shoemaker, Priest and Evangelist, 1963

Shoemaker was an Episcopal priest and Rector of Calvary Church, NYC from 1925-41, during which time he helped inspire the founding of Faith at Work & Alcoholics Anonymous https://t.co/sQJlNtsm0d pic.twitter.com/L8bB2WKlwD

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) January 31, 2020

Almighty God, Who hast enabled Thy faithful soldiers and servants to play the man, to endure hardness, to love mercy, to fight the good fight of faith, and to refuse no service in the Name of Christ: grant unto us whom Thou hast called to serve under our Saviour’s banner a single heart to spend and to be spent for Thee and for those whom He has loved even unto death; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiber’i-as. And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!” Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

–John 6:1-15