More Church of England leaders were aware of the John Smyth scandal and should follow the Archbishop of Canterbury’s decision to resign, according to the head of the official inquiry into child abuse.

Professor Alexis Jay said that abuse continued in the church and the cover-up of Smyth’s decades of wrongdoing could not be “down to one person”.

The Most Rev Justin Welby, 68, will stand down in January and pass his duties to the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, who will act in a “caretaker” role.

Alexis Jay, who conducted the inquiry into child sex abuse, says more people must have known about John Smyth and that abuse is continuing in Church of Englandhttps://t.co/fgX70ALtCG

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) November 25, 2024

You may listen directly here:

Or you may download it there.

Ephesians 6:10✞ pic.twitter.com/AbeBCbf8zT

— Catherine ♡ =^..^= (@Catangels) November 13, 2024

Far too many people think “they don’t need reality,” [Bill] Maher told social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University, author of “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”

“We’ve made reality obsolete — interesting choice,” said Maher. “Parents today, it’s kind of the worst of both worlds. Too much hovering in real life, where there is any left, and then none with virtual. You go in your room, lock yourself in there with the portal of evil that is the phone. … I feel like parents, in each generation, ceded more control to children.”

In response, Haidt — a self-avowed Jewish atheist — stressed that modern life continues to eat away at the traditions of the past.

“As life gets easier, as people get wealthier, as we move away from the old days, authority tends to decay — there tends to be less respect for authority, less respect for the old ways,” said Haidt. “Kids need structure, they need moral rules. … When it seems as though anything is permissible, it doesn’t make people happy. It makes them feel disoriented and lost.”

Read it all (quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon).

"Why haven't more religious leaders been willing to address the scary trends linked to smartphone abuse in the urgent, even fiery language used by secular figures such as Haidt and Maher?" asks @tweetmattingly https://t.co/ne2ZAAe1y8

— Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) November 23, 2024

By the end of the Bush years, the New Atheists believed they were fighting a vast, dominant American evangelicalism—a literal theocracy! Some of them still feel that way. Yet so much has happened in the intervening years, and the tone and tenor of unbelief has generally changed. Sunday Assembly, a “church” for non-believers recently profiled on CBS, exemplifies this metamorphosis. 

Despite the fact that it was founded in 2013 by two British comedians, Sunday Assembly lacks the anti-religious mockery of the Flying Spaghetti Monster crowd. Its tone is more therapeutic and upbeat. With sixty chapters globally, its motto is “live better, help often, and wonder more.” Services feature “a TED Talk-style talk” along with sing-alongs (“pop songs mainly” according to the group’s website), inspirational readings, and the sharing of personal stories. Coffee and donuts are served afterward. “We release a lot of endorphins,” Amy Boyle, one of the group’s leaders, told CBS.

Members of Sunday Assembly invoke the word “community” like an apotropaic gesture to explain their interest in attending. But real community always coheres around something. It does not exist for its own sake. So, what is the central fire around which the Sunday Assembly congregates? A shared commitment to releasing endorphins? Or to the vague admonition to “live better, help often, and wonder more”? 

Read it all.

The dramatic failure of New Atheism to provide any vital culture or source of meaning is well-established; Sunday Assembly invites us to walk—and “live” and “wonder”—among its ruins.https://t.co/ynOHPTnVG1

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) November 23, 2024

O loving God, by whose grace thy servant James Huntington gathered a community dedicated to love and discipline and devotion to the holy Cross of our Savior Jesus Christ: Send thy blessing upon all who proclaim Christ crucified, and move the hearts of many to look unto him and be saved; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

The Episcopal Church also commemorates James Otis Sargent Huntington, Priest and Monk, 1935 pic.twitter.com/lgSeiwMh0U

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) November 25, 2014

O God, who didst wonderfully deliver thy people out of Egypt and didst bring them into their own land: Deliver us, we beseech thee, from the tyranny of sin, and bring us into that land where the Prince of Peace reigneth, and the lives of men proclaim thy righteousness; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Today is the Solemnity of Christ the King, with which the Church concludes the Liturgical Year by reminding the world that nothing, no person or law, is above God. Christ is Lord of time and history, Lord of all creation.

Enjoy the Communion • Sedebit: https://t.co/mVA3Jr2HsA pic.twitter.com/V3dXy560v9

— Neumz (@neumz_now) November 24, 2024

Yet he saved them for his name’s sake,
that he might make known his mighty power.
He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry;
and he led them through the deep as through a desert.

–Psalm 106:8-9

Beautiful sunrise view from Downtown Charleston to kick off our Thanksgiving week! pic.twitter.com/50UTbOp6Rl

— Joey Sovine Live 5 (@JoeySovine) November 25, 2024