It should go without saying — but it does not, so I must say it — that what I publish here is my own thought. I am an Anglican priest in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and I certainly write from that perspective. But, in doing so, unless otherwise noted I am not expressing the views of my parish, my diocese, or my province.

I am old enough to remember the spate of assassinations in the 1960s, perhaps most notably the murders of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Each revealed a sickness at the heart of American social and political life. But the murder of Charlie Kirk is to me, for many reasons, fundamentally and qualitatively different. It has become the “third rail” of discourse: touch it — speak of it — and risk your own “death.” It has revealed and exacerbated the deep divide in our nation and, most tragically, in the church.

Glen Scrivener shares some helpful insight into the source of — or at least the contributing factors behind — these divisions. He calls them the Six Lies. To adapt a classical Christian phrase, I might call them the social logismoi, the persistent, erroneous thoughts with which we are being assaulted by the evil one. To borrow from St. Ignatius of Loyola, these thoughts are characteristic of spiritual desolation and must therefore be recognized and rejected.

I commend to you Glen Scrivener’s video, which was brought to my attention by a good and faithful fellow priest. It is around seventeen minutes long and is most certainly worth the time. The link follows: