Saturday Lagniappe: ‘What Will Become of the Episcopal Church?’ And More

What Will Become of the Episcopal Church? 

The decline of the Episcopal Church prompts the question: What will become of the Episcopal Church?

Trump’s closing argument to evangelicals: I will protect you. Harris won’t.
As the 2024 presidential contest enters its final days, former President Donald Trump is turning to the group most responsible for getting him this far: evangelical Christians.

When I read this article, these words from Psalm 146 came to mind. “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith for ever….” One of the lessons of the past is that dictators once they rise to power will turn on their earlier supporters. The former president is not known for his truthfulness, his trustworthiness, or his ability to appeal to the good in people, to their “better angel.”

JD Vance’s ‘Courage Tour’ appearance may have broken laws
GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s Sept. 28 appearance during a Pennsylvania stop on Lance Wallnau’s “Courage Tour” may have broken nonprofit tax law. Ziklag, the deep-pocketed but little known nonprofit that helped underwrite the Pentecostalism-meets-politics swing state tour, may also face trouble, ProPublica reported.

The Agonizing Choice of Christians
“In more normal times, people would have recognized such a stark anti-Christian option. For people whose word is trustworthy, the witness of trustworthy people is tarnished when they support a compulsive liar. And somewhere along the line (maybe not immediately in these raw times), there will be a son or daughter or grandchild or Sunday School member who is willing to tell them about the hurt they feel – that someone they trusted has lived and taught one thing and yet supported another.”

Christian Nationalism in the Mirror
“A proliferating literature investigates and criticizes Christian nationalism as it appears under many labels. What makes Baptizing America a distinctive contribution is the authors’ assertion that Christian nationalism is not limited to white evangelicals and Pentecostals, or to recent decades. They argue convincingly that it has been popular among mainline Christians for a long time and remains so today. Few mainline believers are utterly free from its manifestations. Many remain unaware of our complicity. Even in the Episcopal Church.”

Exposing soft Christian nationalism
An exploration of how soft Christian nationalism, hiding within the broader sympathies of everyday Americans, fuels support for authoritarian leaders and political violence.

Reexamining Sacramental Life for Baptists and Evangelicals
A strange theology has overtaken American Christianity, a force that has largely remained oblique and unpopular for the first 1900 years of the faith and yet that has become popularized and spread in the emergence of Fundamentalist Evangelicalism’s ascendency. This strange belief has become the default view among American Evangelicals and effectively denies the role of the sacraments in the healthy life of the church.

6 Things to Do When You Don’t Feel Like Going to Church
In this article Quentin Falkena first looks at what happens when we come to worship. Then he considers how to cultivate the desire and practice of weekly worship.

Anglicans Ablaze

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