Monday, October 6, 2025

Part I

The Government Shutdown Soap Opera Continues: And Settling on an Agreement Will Not Be Easy

Well, just in case you hadn’t heard, we are in a government shutdown, what’s officially known as a partial government shutdown. And you would think, given news coverage, that it is the most important happening in the world. I do not believe that it is the most important happening in the world, but it is perhaps right now, the political event in the United States, which is using up the greatest amount of oxygen, and at least a part of the importance of the issue is that fact. This is made up politics in many ways. This is a show on the part of both parties, to some extent, but it also represents a strange turn in history because the role played by Republicans for years, is now being played by Democrats and the role being played by Democrats for decades, is now being played by Republicans.

Why? It is because we have a Republican President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. We have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives in of course, Speaker Mike Johnson. And we also have a small Republican majority in the United States Senate. The problem is in the Senate, Republicans alone, don’t have 60 votes to achieve cloture, which means to bring the measure to the floor for a vote where it would win because of the Republican majority. The problem is, getting to a vote that takes 60 votes to vote to vote. That’s otherwise what is known as the filibuster rule. Okay, so the action right now is entirely because the Republican majority in the Senate can’t get this through. And so, what we had yesterday on national television and in the media, but particularly on the Sunday morning talk shows, which are very interesting just in terms of where the government conversation is or where government leaders want the conversation to be.

On those Sunday morning talk shows, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, ABC News This week, they were all constant in conversation about the government shutdown. Now, first of all, just a matter of fact, it isn’t a shutdown to the entire government. All the military have not decided to go on vacation. They’re not on leave. There are essential government services and honestly, if you look at some of them, they’re not quite so essential. On the other hand, here’s the politically very critical point. When you have a shutdown like this, it is intended to bring about a certain amount of pain, and that pain is eventually felt not so much by politicians but by citizens. And at that point, you’re going to discover that there will be some way out of this. So let’s just talk in political terms. Who has the most important hand here? Well, certainly at this point it is President Trump and the Republicans because the Democrats are not in a position to do anything by majority in either house and they don’t have the White House.

So what they’re trying to do is overcome what was the tremendous disappointment of their left wing, the last time something like this happened. And you, at that point, even had Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer voting with the Republicans to extend the budget authorization at that point. And now, Senator Schumer is facing a very likely challenge for his, not only his position in terms of a democratic leader in the Senate, honestly, he’s very concerned about having someone like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez run against him for his Senate seat. So what you’re seeing here is a political dynamic. The Democrats have thought they had had a really strong hand, and maybe will turn out they do. And this is the really interesting thing to watch right now.

The stick that the Democrats thought they had was to go for the American people and say, “The Republicans need to negotiate with us in a bipartisan manner. And what we’re trying to do is to put back in place necessary support for the American people to be able to afford health insurance.” And the battle Republicans eliminated in the big beautiful bill, they eliminated subsidies that had been put in place in the context of COVID and that’s going to hurt the American people. 

Okay, so just a couple of quick things. Those subsidies were put in place by the insistence of the Biden administration under the conditions of COVID, and it was a pretty radical expansion of the coverage under Obamacare as it’s known, the Affordable Care Act. And the problem is of course, and this is just the big problem, Christians need to note this, conservatives need to watch this very carefully. When you have an expansion in any entitlement program, even when it is supposed to be a temporary expansion, it’s very hard, very hard to go back to the previous spending.

It’s just almost impossible. And of course, even the previous spending, it just adjusted for inflation and increased costs will be higher. But what the Democrats are trying to do is to say, “Look, the American people need this help.” Now, some American people, no doubt, do need help. For one thing, what the Democrats don’t want to say is that Obamacare has really created escalating costs that the government hasn’t been able to keep up with. Healthcare costs have not gone down, they have gone up, and the Obamacare structure is a part of the problem. But look, politically speaking, you don’t even hear radical Republicans talking about undoing Obamacare. That is now just a part of the political landscape. That tells you a lot morally about how government works. You have something like this put in place. Republicans say, “It is our ambition to undo this. We’re going to undo this if it’s our last act.”

The next thing you know, they’re talking about trying to eliminate a radical increase in the program. The program itself, honestly, is pretty much at this point, just a part of the landscape. Well, okay, here’s the other thing. The Democrats are saying, “Look, the American people need this relief in terms of healthcare costs.” Well, here’s what we need to know. We’re talking about vast billions of dollars that were supposed to be a temporary expenditure in order to help people who weren’t working primarily because of the context of COVID. And so, you can understand in that emergency situation, politicians well, especially in the Democratic side, they said, “Here’s our justification for doing this.” Republicans said back then, “This is a sneaky effort to permanently increase Obamacare coverage and by a vast scale.

Kimberley Strassel writing an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal gets right to the point. She says, “This is a big test, not of the Democrats, but of the Republicans.” The Republicans know that many millions of people who have benefited by that supposedly temporary support, they’re actually non-working adults who should be working. And so, there’s just all kinds of things in this. And I’m not saying there aren’t Americans, American families that are struggling with these issues. I am saying that this is the test for Republicans to find out if Republicans have believed their own arguments when it comes to just trying to have any control whatsoever on healthcare expenditures in terms of the Obamacare program. Now, what the Democrats don’t want is anything that’s supposed to be temporary spending to stay temporary. They want it to become permanent. And the democratic process here, the convictions of the Democratic Party are that the government should spend ever more dollars in ever-increasing and expanding programs.

And quite honestly, that’s a very hard logic to confront. It’s a harder logic to stop, truth be told, and Republicans have not been able to stop it. The question is, can they even slow it down? So the shutdown is kind of political theater. You don’t have to worry about an invasion from a foreign army in the midst of this. What you do have to worry about is, what will be in the final political settlement. And what you do need to realize is that with every hour that passes this week, there’s going to be increased pressure, especially in the Senate for there to be a change. Now, by the way, if the Senate comes up with something very much different than what the House passed, then it’s unlikely it’s going to pass in the House, which means this could actually be a shutdown that’s very difficult to get out of. Getting into it, pretty easy, getting out of it, not so easy.

Part II

The First Woman Archbishop of Canterbury Is Announced: This Represents a Huge Crisis For Conservatives

It’s also not the most important story on planet Earth right now. There are other bigger stories. And I want us to turn to one in particular in the United Kingdom where the Church of England has a new Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, let’s just remind ourselves, the Church of England emerged in the Reformation, in the English Reformation. It emerged in the 16th century. It emerged at least largely because of the political and let’s just say, marital needs of King Henry VIII. The Tudor Monarch often seems one of the most powerful monarchs in all of English history, all of now British history. And Henry VIII, who by the way, had impressed the Vatican as a Christian Prince by writing a treatise against Martin Luther in the Reformation. At one point, of course, without going into great detail into Henry VIII’s marital situation, six wives, you remember, your life wasn’t necessarily going to last very long as the Queen to King Henry.

But the fact is, that there were great issues of historical importance at stake, dynastic succession, the peace and unity, the kingdom, all these things were involved. King Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church, and established the Church of England, which by the way, has always claimed Episcopal continuity going backwards. And so it, from the very beginning, claimed to be the church in England. Now, once you had the establishment of the Church of England, often known as the Anglican Church, and then in fellowship with other Anglican churches, the Anglican Communion, once you had the establishment of the Church of England, you have to understand that King Henry and the church continued to make the argument of apostolic succession going backwards. So there’s a sense in which it’s kind of a trick question, when did the Church of England begin? Well, they’re going to say that their episcopal succession began back centuries before.

You actually get to the official declaration of the Church of England and by the way, you had the establishment of the senior clerical position being the Archbishop of Canterbury. A long story, but the Archbishop of Canterbury is officially the primate, the chief priesthood officeholder of the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not the supreme governor of the church. Instead, that is actually the reigning monarch. So in this case, it will be King Charles III. But in terms of the clerical leadership, the ministerial leadership of the church, the top role was played by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Second to him, the Archbishop of York, and third in seniority, the Bishop of London. And this takes us to the fact that the right reverend, the right honorable Sarah Mullally, who is currently the Bishop of London, has now been named the next Archbishop of Canterbury. This is the first time a woman, a female priest, has served in that capacity in the centuries old tradition of the church.

It has caused a great deal of celebration in some quarters, a great deal of consternation in others. And what you’re seeing here is headline news in one of the most important denominations or parts of Christianity, organized Christianity, in terms of the world. And so, we’re talking about multiple millions of persons in the churches of the Anglican Communion, which by the way, includes within the Anglican Communion, not within the Church of England. So these are national churches, but they’re in communion with each other. And the supremacy in that, at least I should say, the senior position in that, has been held by the Archbishop of Canterbury in terms of the Anglican Communion that would include the Episcopal Church in the United States. It would include other national churches. More on that in just a moment. But the liberalism within the Anglican Communion, especially by the way, since now a generation ago, you had the Episcopal Church in the United States appoint an openly gay bishop and the controversy over that led to study groups and all the rest within the Anglican Communion.

But the Anglican Communion took no lasting action to define itself over against having a homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church. And so eventually, conservatives created what was known as GAFCON, which is a global communion of far more conservative Anglicans. Now, the vast majority of Anglicans, first and foremost, are not there in England. They’re elsewhere in the world, somewhat traceable and kind of a map of what used to be the British Empire, and especially, you’re looking at some very vigorous Anglican churches in Africa. And that takes us to the fact that The Most Reverend Dr. Laurent Mbanda, who is the Archbishop of Rwanda and he’s head of GAFCON, he released a statement saying that the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the Archbishop of Canterbury, is opposed by the majority the Anglican Communion that in his words, “Still believes the Bible requires a male-only Episcopacy.” So that means only men serving as bishops.

This is very similar. This is complementarianism even among Baptists who are complementarian and Presbyterians who are complementarian. We don’t have bishops above the level of the local church as Anglicans do. But there’s the understanding that pastors, elders, bishops are, according to the New Testament, to be men as called of God. 

But when it comes to the conservative angst concern over the new Archbishop of Canterbury to be Sarah Mullally, you need to understand, it’s not just over the fact that she is a woman. Now, that’s groundbreaking and it’s going to lead to a breaking in the Anglican Communion, one way or another. I think that’s highly predictable, but it’s also about this woman and her theological belief. So you have to hold these two different concerns, both of which are front and center, among evangelical or conservative Anglicans, whether they’re in the Church of England or elsewhere in the Anglican Communion.

So it’s over the fact that she is a woman, and remember, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, that role is supposed to be at least the titular head, the organizing head, of the Anglican Communion. That’s already been very much in flux because conservatives, particularly in places such as Australia and some in the United States that left the Episcopal Church and had been in various Anglican churches, and especially in Africa, you just have a very strong pushback. That’s why GAFCON was established and why you now have the Archbishop there in Rwanda as chairman of this alternative international group, but you see how the lines are clearly defined. They’re defined in two ways when it comes to this announcement about Bishop Mullally becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that is, number one, they are opposed to a woman being in this role out of biblical conviction and they’re also opposed to her in conviction.

She’s been very loud in her support of LGBTQ issues and her response to activists in that communion. She has pushed for greater recognition and look, the breakpoint right now, the big decision point in the Church of England is going to be over legalized same-sex marriage and the last Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who was no Rock of Gibraltar and like George Carey, I’d say George Carey and Justin Welby, both of them were advertised as evangelicals, but they turned out to be the kinds of evangelicals who aren’t evangelicals. And both of them caved on different issues. Lord Carey has even gone, as we’ve discussed, into the House of Lords defending assisted suicide against his successor, once removed, Archbishop Justin Welby. Justin Welby on the sexuality issues and so many other issues, just has not been strong at all. He had to resign from office before the expected end of his term, because he was accused of not handling some sex abuse situations well.

But you look now at the fact that in the Church of England, you have a real crisis, and that’s because conservatives in the Church of England who don’t recognize that a woman should serve in the Office of Bishop. Well, when you had Sarah Mullally appointed the Bishop of London, you had some really famous evangelical, more conservative congregations there. They were able to ask for alternative Episcopal oversight, which is to say, oversight by a bishop who was a man rather than the Bishop of London who was a woman. Well, now that woman is being elevated to be the chief cleric of the church, to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. And thus, you can’t have an alternative to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England. It’s putting conservatives in an excruciating situation there in England. 

I wrote an extensive piece on this for WORLD Opinions today. And in it I cite Dr. Gerald Bray. He’s an historian and theologian. I think one of the most respected voices among conservative Anglicans. He’s been long associated with the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. He didn’t hold anything back when he wrote an article for the evangelical paper there, Evangelicals Now “Under trained and inexperienced, with a proper job somewhere else, the only reason she became bishop is that she was a woman. When women were wanted in short supply, a man in her position,” said Dr. Bray, “would never have been considered. General awareness of that will make her task exceptionally difficult. Everybody in the Church of England will be polite to her, but few will listen to whatever she has to say. I then said in the British tradition of pushing on, anyway,” Dr. Bray concluded, “the best we can hope for is that Evangelicals in particular, will be left alone to get on with the mission of Christ, and that when the See of Canterbury becomes vacant again, a more promising candidate may be found.” Now, that is just the ultimate British, let’s push on. Because let’s face it, it’s going to be very hard to overcome this particular development in the Church of England. 

Now, one of the most interesting things about all of this is that Bishop Sarah, and by the way, that is Anglican form where you speak of the first name here. It’s the same way that the British monarch is King Charles, not King Charles Windsor, but King Charles. Bishop Sarah, well, she only entered the priesthood in 2002. Before that, she was in the office as Britain’s Chief Nursing Officer. Of course, you can imagine where the puns are going now. The article I wrote had the title, “A Liberal Nurse to Lead a Dying Church?” And I think that’s what we’re looking at here, and that’s what Gerald Bray was referring to when he pointed out that she really didn’t have a lot of training in the ministry nor a traditional theological degree in terms of preparation.

Now, I say this with grave concern because none of us is on an island here. I have benefited tremendously in my spiritual life by conservative Anglicans and by many in the Anglican tradition. My life and my thinking has been greatly enriched by figures such as John Owen and Bishop Charles Ryle, towering evangelical figures. I hold the memory and examples set by Reformation martyrs such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, Bishop Nicholas Ridley, and Bishop Hugh Latimer. I have learned so much by their courage and their conviction, so important in terms of our Protestant tradition, especially in the English-speaking world, where whether most American evangelicals know it or not, much of what we hear and recognize is not only from Scripture, but a good bit of it’s also from the Book of Common Prayer, especially when we get to something like a funeral or even more commonly, a wedding. I’ve just benefited a great deal. I love Anglican music. I do hear it far more in my library than I do in my church, but I am an Anglican in taste, but not in theology. 

In my own lifetime, especially as I was a young man encountering the influence of people like JI Packer and John Stott, so long a rector there in London. Again, towering figures in the Evangelical movement, and there are some very faithful Evangelical Anglicans right now. There’s some wonderfully faithful men. There’s some wonderfully faithful pulpits. There’s some very brave figures and courageous congregations, and I’m thankful for them, but they are really in a very difficult position right now. And it is not just because the new Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman. That is a breaking point in itself. It is also the convictions that this new Archbishop brings. That’s just another part of the problem.

I want to end my comments on this issue today by going back to the article that I published at WORLD Opinions today. I cite at the end, having historian John Shelton Reed on our campus here a few years ago, and he made the point that you can only expect so much orthodoxy out of a church founded by King Henry VIII. Just a little bit of English history, and you know exactly what we’re talking about. I have to say, I can only wonder what King Henry VIII would think of this development and of the fact that the man who now sits on his throne, King Charles III approved of it. But I did reflect that I don’t think King Henry’s comments would’ve been quotable at WORLD Opinions nor on the briefing. So I’ll just leave this story right there.

Part III

The FDA Approves a Generic Version of Mifepristone: The Trump Administration Must Reverse This Quickly

One additional issue before we go today, and that is that at the end of last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved a generic form of Mifepristone, the abortion drug, and it did so, I think, at least to some degree, trying to fly under the radar, but pro-life leaders saw it and are making much of it, and they’re absolutely right. The Trump administration should not have done this, and it was done even in the face of the fact that there is mounting evidence of the dangers represented by Mifepristone and the fact that Mifepristone itself and Mifepristone in any form, needs to have its approval rescinded by the FDA. It was a political act with medical cover, and that at great cost to the dignity and sanctity of human life, no doubt mounting by the tens of thousands just about every month.

I want to point to a report in the New York Times about this story and the controversy, especially coming from pro-lifers. The Times reports, “The FDA’s, that’s the Food and Drug Administration’s mission, is intended to be apolitical and rooted in scientific evidence. Reviews of drug applications are conducted by the agency’s scientists and technical experts and often involve detailed examinations and back and forth with the companies applying for approval.” I just want you to look carefully at that sentence, just listen to it. We are told here that the FDA’s mission is supposed to be apolitical. Well, there’s a sense in which that’s a proper aspiration, but when you look at the contemporary context, there’s no way with a straight face to say this is all apolitical. Furthermore, it’s supposed to be rooted in scientific evidence. Well, all right, well, what happens when someone brings contrary evidence that indicates the danger represented by this drug?

Then we’re told that the reviews of drug applications are conducted by the agency’s scientists and technical experts. We, as Christians, need to highly value appropriate expertise and knowledge. That is also a part of the Christian worldview. I don’t want a surgeon who just took a couple of online courses in medicine and surgery. I want a board-certified surgeon, but when you use an argument like this about something as controversial as the abortion drug, Mifepristone, and you to say, “Reviews of drug applications are conducted by the agency’s scientists and technical experts.” I just want you to watch the fact that that can be a huge evasion, because you’re basically being told the rest of the world has no right to ask any questions about this. You’re being told that even doctors and other experts outside their experts don’t have the right to demand a review or to push for change here, and we’re told that this involves detailed examinations and back and forth with the companies applying for approval.

Yeah, back and forth all right. And this one almost got by public attention. I’m glad that it did not escape public attention. The Trump administration needs to jump on this. Erin Hawley of the Alliance Defending Freedom wrote, “Make no mistake, Mifepristone is not your ordinary drug. Most obviously, it intentionally takes the life of an unborn child. Drugs approved by the FDA are supposed to provide a therapeutic benefit, yet pregnancy is not a disease, and rather than curing an illness, Mifepristone takes a human life.” She also details as she has previously in court, that the drug also poses serious risk to women. As she says, “its own label acknowledges that about one in 25 women will end up in the emergency room after taking the drug.” 

All of these things just in our conversation today, underline the fact that Christians have to be awake and aware all the time. The importance of these issues should be clear to us all and the world’s just going to keep throwing them at us. Our responsibility is to keep thinking as Christians, even as we seek to be faithful in this generation. God help us.