The Rev. Chris Warner was elected on October 15, 2022 during an electing synod of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (DOMA) to be the successor to Bishop John Guernsey who is set to retire in February 2023. Bishop-elect Warner is scheduled to be consecrated on Saturday, February 18, 2023, at The Falls Church Anglican in Falls Church, Virginia.

Warner is formerly the rector of the Church of the Holy Cross, Sullivan’s Island/Daniel Island, South Carolina. Prior to serving as Rector at Church of the Holy Cross, he served as associate rector there. He also served as rector at St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center in South Carolina and as curate at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus, Georgia. He married Catherine in 1993, and they have three adult children ages 27, 24, and 23.

After he received the news of the consent from the College of Bishops, Warner reflected: “I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. It is an honor to be joining the College of Bishops; I look forward to serving the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic, and I’m excited about the future.” When asked about how he will fill the big shoes of retiring Bishop John Guernsey, Warner responded, “I’m going to try and wear my own shoes because it will be too difficult to fill his. I’m glad he will be around for a while to ease in the transition. I’m coming from outside the diocese, so I need to get to know the staff and clergy throughout in a familial way.”

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On Wednesday, January 11, 2023, the College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America seated two bishops and consented to the election of two bishops-elect. Learn more here: https://t.co/wUN3FXcceX #Anglican

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) January 12, 2023

The latest American Religious Benchmark Survey dovetailed with previous research at many points, but the pandemic’s unique impact on the young appeared to be a departure from some previous findings. CT reported in January 2022 that older and younger Americans both were more likely than middle-aged Americans to have experienced attendance drops during the pandemic.

Now senior adults apparently have come back to church even though their younger counterparts have not. According to the new survey, fewer Americans ages 65 and older changed their pre-COVID-19 church attendance patterns than any other group.

Single adults and self-identified liberals decreased their church attendance significantly as well. Before the pandemic, 30 percent of adults who had never married said they never attended religious services. That jumped to 44 percent by spring 2022. Among married adults, the percentage jumped from 22 percent to 28 percent.

While 31 percent of liberals never attended church before the pandemic, 46 percent said they didn’t attend in spring 2022. That compares with 14 percent of conservatives before the pandemic and 20 percent after.

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Two-thirds of Americans reported the same level of church attendance both before and after the pandemic.

Yet declines among some groups left attendance down overall.https://t.co/FGqQr79O8o

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 10, 2023

So, in our time, surrounded by the pagan gods of self, wealth, politics, sensuality, and death, and by a secularism aimed at neutering Christianity, we may still pray for a springtime for the Church. There are signs of dissatisfaction: with the atomism and thin value set of late liberalism, which undermine identity, character, attachments, and civic orientation; with isolation, loneliness, narcissism, anxieties, and addictions; with social divisions, gender ideology, and manufactured outrage; and with the poverty of the sacred. Worshipping private gods or oneself does not bring the fulfillment, communion, and transcendence people crave.

But if Christianity is to do great things again, it must recover its voice. We must “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15), boldly in words and deeds. We must avoid retreat or retrenchment, which would make Christianity irrelevant. We must see the current chastisement of the Church as an opportunity for purification and a promise of resurrection. To survive times like these will require a desecularization and depaganization of institutions and hearts; a clear-sighted and fervent faith; effective telling of the Christian story through preaching, teaching, arts, education, and media; renewed confidence in the Christian anthropological, soteriological, and ethical vision; an affective liturgical-devotional life; lives of justice, compassion, and holiness; the renewal of supportive communities of family, parish, and school; a willingness to collaborate with people who are more post- or pre-Christian than Christian; patience, fidelity, and hope to persevere through dark times; above all, the grace of the Holy Spirit, to whom we pray Come.

As St. Peter told the persecuted Church: “Dear friends, I urge you . . . live such good lives among the pagans that, though they suspect you of wrong­doing, they may see your good deeds and glorify God for them” (1 Pet. 2:11–12). Political conflicts, culture wars, discrimination, and institutional diminution are not what we’d wish for, but neither should we despair, for they are opportunities to witness to the gospel. Only this kind of Christianity can honestly say that it loves God and humanity and will go wherever God and humanity are, without fear of being sullied or bruised. Only such a Christianity can reunite a divided Church and culture, provide a foundation for a genuinely tolerant, pluralist society, and bring God and humanity closer together. When we do these things, we are not post-Christian, or pre-Christian, or pseudo-­Christian. We are simply, authentically Christian.

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The West: Post- or Pre-Christian? | Anthony Fisher https://t.co/YyFNXpm3oZ

— Levan Ramishvili (@levanrami) January 12, 2023

10. What statement about friendship can be more sublime, more true, more valuable than this: it has been proved that friendship must begin in Christ, continue with Christ, and be perfected by Christ. Come, now: propose what in your opinion should be the first question about friendship.

IVO. I think we should first discuss what friendship is, lest we appear to be painting on a void, not knowing what should guide and organize our talk.

11. AELRED. Is Cicero’s definition not an adequate beginningfor you? “Friendship is agreement in things human and divine, with good will and charity.”

12. IVO. If his definition suffices for you, it’s good enough for me.

–Aelred of Rievaulx Spiritual Friendship I.10-12 (Lawrence C. Braceland, tr., Marsha L. Dutton ed., Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2010), p.57

12 Jan 1519: d. Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor since 1508 #otd He expanded the influence of the Hapsburg dynasty especially in #Spain by marriage of his son Philip the Handsome to eventual queen Joanna of Castile in 1498, which allowed Charles V hold Aragon & Castile (GCI) pic.twitter.com/MKgFrG6vzt

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) January 12, 2023

Almighty God, who didst endow thy abbot Aelred with the gift of Christian friendship and the wisdom to lead others in the way of holiness: Grant to thy people that same spirit of mutual affection, that, in loving one another, we may know the love of Christ and rejoice in the gift of thy eternal goodness; through the same Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today the Church of England celebrates Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 https://t.co/Q54tbIq5xd

Image: Aelred depicted in a C13th manuscript of The Mirror of Charity, Public Domain via Wikimedia pic.twitter.com/LtZG2vkhYP

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) January 12, 2023

O Almighty God, who by thy holy Apostle hast taught us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto thee, as our reasonable service: Hear us, we beseech thee, as we now come to thee in the name of Jesus Christ; and give us grace that we may dedicate ourselves wholly to thy service, and henceforth live only to thy glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let the day begin #landscape #landscapephotography #NORFOLK #sunrisephotography pic.twitter.com/l8GyExjPzh

— The slim photographer (@simongray99) January 12, 2023

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

–Ephesians 2:11-22

Good morning America! Today’s sunrise on Cape Cod National Seashore. #sunrise #ocean #StormHour pic.twitter.com/ktnQBImsEc

— Darius Aniunas (@dariusaniunas) January 12, 2023