Many of you heard the Stand Firm podcast on the situation of Austin Becton, who leads Good Shepherd Nashville in the ACNA Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO). A very condensed summary: Becton on Facebook encouraged his parish to celebrate Pride Month. In so doing he wrote one can be “LGBTQ+” yet remain “faithful.” One of the results of that is C4SO Bishop Todd Hunter issued him a Godly Admonition (For non-Anglicans, that is a serious directive, not just advice.) and suspended him for six weeks from ministry during which Becton is to receive council and presumably correct or clarify himself.
The statement Becton issued to his parish may be found here. Bishop Hunter’s godly admonition may be found here. (By the way, these are already publicly available. We at Stand Firm are not engaging in any hacking or leaking.)
First, I should give credit where credit is due particularly since I have been critical of Bishop Hunter and Archbishop Wood in other matters. Hunter and Wood and a number of other bishops and clergy acted quickly as Hunter’s letter of Godly Admonition to Becton acknowledges:
…Your Facebook post of June 3, 2025 has caused your clergy peers, clergy outside of C4SO, ACNA bishops, and Archbishop Wood to raise concerns with me. Other C4SO clergy “liked” your post. This is a confusion that I must address as Bishop.
Although this situation is not yet completely resolved to my knowledge, I am encouraged that this matter was not ignored or tolerated but quickly addressed. I also appreciate that Bishop Hunter has dealt firmly with other problem parishes and clergy that wanted to become more “affirming” — Resurrection South Austin, The Table Indy, and others — even though that meant that several of these parishes left his diocese and the Anglican Church in North America.
But this seems to keep happening in C4SO. That points to a deeper problem. C4SO, it is fair to say, is the ACNA diocese that most pushes applied Critical Theory and its variants. Bishop Hunter once endorsed Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory to his clergy, and he certainly gave it and related ideologies and ideologues a warm welcome when he founded and led the Center for Formation, Peace, and Justice.
At the same time, the rest of ACNA is in no position to point fingers at C4SO as a number of dioceses and the Province itself has often welcomed and enabled the promotion of applied Critical Theory, aka wokeness.
So the situation is this: largely because the Episcopal Church’s consecration of Gene Robinson, a gay man who divorced his wife then “married” his male partner, as bishop was the last straw that led to the formation of the Anglican Church in North America, ACNA does not welcome alphabet advocacy from its clergy and parishes. Yet ACNA to a large extent does welcome applied Critical Theory, even though some bishops and many clergy oppose it.
This is not feasible. It will not work and is not working. This is like building your house on the edge of a cliff and opposing rockslides. It’s like supporting Communism but being shocked when political suppression, sham elections, economic failures, and gulags result. For Critical Theory and alphabet advocacy go together and have for years. Queer Theory itself is a variant of Critical Theory.
Here is where I, of all people, agree with the concept of Intersectionality. Critical Theory and related ideologies all have an oppressor-oppressed view of society. By that logic, racial issues, alphabet issues, gender issues, “Free Palestine” etc. are at their heart one issue of oppressed vs. oppressor. So these issues intersect and are not to be separated, at least not according to Critical Theory and Intersectionality. (This is how you get the oddity of Queers for Palestine, by the way.)
So one cannot be for Critical Theory and its applications yet oppose alphabet theories or Queer Theory. Well, one can, just as one could build a nice house on the edge of a cliff, or support Communism without political suppression, but it is wishful thinking that will not work in the long run. One cannot welcome wokeness into one’s church without it eventually leading to LGBTQIA2S+ advocacy. Both work along the lines of the Critical Theory oppressor-oppressed narrative. Both are part of the same Intersectional package. They are really not a “both” but one in today’s society. And the two refuse to stay separated no matter how much one may try.
So it is no coincidence that the diocese that is the most welcoming to wokeness is also the one that has the most issues with clergy and parishes becoming affirming.
But, again, this is an ACNA problem, not just a C4SO problem. ACNA is trying to follow Christ and His word on gender, sexual morals and family issues, and is doing well for the most part so far. Yet much of ACNA accommodates the world on other woke issues. That is serving two masters, and we know what Jesus said about that.
This is not to diminish the praiseworthy actions of Bishops Hunter, Wood and others to address quickly the Austin Becton situation. And Hunter and ACNA bishops have also well addressed similar situations. Further, a case could be made that ACNA’s wokeness problem has lessened somewhat in recent years. It helped that in 2021 Reformed Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Ray Sutton issued a good statement in this area and then Archbishop Foley Beach endorsed that statement.
Still, opposing alphabet ideologies while accommodating other woke ideologies can only work for so long . . . until it doesn’t.
