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[Episcopal News Service] Jayne and Nick Kinney are sometimes a bit late for Sunday services at St. Martin’s by the Lake in Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota. When they are, fellow parishioners can tell it’s because Nick spent the previous evening in the ring and still sports remnants of the colorful, glittery makeup he wears as his professional wrestler persona, Nick Pride. Pride is a bad guy (a “heel” in wrestling lingo) whose name exemplifies the worst of the seven deadly sins. The Kinneys have been members of St. Martin’s for four years, Nick told Episcopal News Service, after being drawn to a Christmas Eve service they found so compelling that he wondered aloud if the service was always that good. They returned on Christmas Day just to see, “and sure enough, it was that good,” he said. “I thought, I kinda want to make this our church.” They’ve been attending regularly ever since. Their faith also has moved the couple to make a difference in the lives of others in the Minnesota wrestling community, making themselves available to offer a prayer, a friendly word or even a place to sleep. Nick and other local wrestlers are professionals and get paid for their matches, though most need to keep their day jobs. They are booked through some of the 13 local wrestling companies within a four-hour drive of Minneapolis. The goal for many is to get to the pinnacle of pro wrestling, the WWE – formerly the World Wrestling Federation – which launched the careers of the likes of Hulk Hogan, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena. As in the WWE, which describes what it offers as “sports entertainment,” the physicality in the local circuit is real, but the outcome of matches is determined in advance. Jayne told ENS they don’t consider what they do within the wrestling community a ministry. “We’re just being servants where God puts us, and for us it’s wrestling,” she said. She said the wrestlers they know are “a hodgepodge of people from every walk of life” – people who are getting a master’s degree, battling addiction, having their career funded by a wealthy relative or sleeping in their car. One thing many have in common, she said, is having been burned by a church. And that’s where Nick saw how his faith could make a difference to them. “He quickly became intentional about how he used his time, becoming the person that people could talk to about literally anything,” she said. Sometimes that means listening over a cup of coffee or cat-sitting when someone is on the road. The guest room in their new house became a place where people could stay for a few nights. St. Martin’s rector, the Rev. Jeff Hupf, told ENS he knows the couple “are true believers in the redemptive power of Jesus active in the world, and it just spills out of them,” and that’s what fuels their care for the people in their community. Jayne, who grew up the daughter of a Methodist pastor, said it was an ironic contrast between the wrestler with a name boasting about the deadly sins and the man in the locker room willing to listen to people for hours after a show. “He offers to pray for them if that’s OK, or offers to think about them if being prayed for isn’t something that they’re comfortable with,” she said. She joins in the conversations when that’s helpful. She added, “There have been a couple of guys that we’ve been talking to for years that excitedly told us they started going to church again.” They all text each other about things they heard in Sunday sermons or how they see God working in their lives, she said. Nick’s fascination with wrestling goes back to his childhood, where he found in it “classic stories of good versus evil,” he said. As a young adult, he started to study wrestling and discovered the power of storytelling that takes place. In 2021, Nick decided to give wrestling a try – at 28 he felt it was then or never – and started studying and training with The Academy of Pro Wrestling in St. Paul, Minnesota. They taught him wrestling basics, including what Nick called the most important one – how to fall and not break anything. Wrestlers fall all the time, he said, and it hurts, but they learn how to minimize injuries. But importantly, he also learned how to make it a show. He had studied karate, where moves are compact, so he had some things to unlearn. “In wrestling, you have to make it big, to move in a way that the people sitting in the back row can tell what you are doing. It’s very much like stage acting,” he said. Wrestlers also try to make their actions, which aren’t meant to hurt an opponent, look as believable as possible. “It’s like how a magician doesn’t show where they pull the rabbit out of the hat,” he said. Nick said he always had envisioned himself as a wrestler good guy, known as a “face,” and adopted that persona early on. He thought he was doing well in that role until a local wrestling promoter came up to him after a match. “He said your wrestling is fine, but your character is boring, so we’re going to turn you into a bad guy.” He told Nick to come up with a “fun bad-guy character,” with a long-term potential plan of turning him into a good guy later when the time was right. The bad Nick took off, and eventually, the companies that arrange wrestling events and hire wrestlers for matches only wanted to book him as a heel. “They told me I was much more interesting and marketable as a bad guy,” he said. He now wrestles almost every weekend, and sometimes more than one match a day. When asked about the contradiction of […]

[World Council of Churches] World Council of Churches general secretary the Rev. Jerry Pillay has described the proposal of President Donald Trump as “tantamount to proposing full-scale ethnic cleansing and neo-colonization of the homeland of the 2 million Palestinians of Gaza.” Pillay noted that the proposal violates every applicable principle of international humanitarian and human rights law, flouts decades of efforts by the international community – including by the U.S.– for a just and sustainable peace for the peoples of the region, and would, if implemented, constitute multiple international crimes of the most serious kind.  “The standing of the United States of America as a responsible member of the international community has been gravely diminished by the proposal itself, not to speak of any actual implementation thereof,” Pillay said. Read the entire article here.

[Church in Wales] The Church in Wales is preparing to revisit its stance on same-sex blessings as the time-limited provision introduced in October 2021 nears its expiration in September 2026. In a message to members, the archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev. Andrew John, has called for a period of prayerful discernment and open dialogue as the church explores potential paths forward. Options include allowing the provision to lapse, extending the current blessings, or taking the significant step of introducing a formal service of marriage for same-sex couples. Here is John’s statement: I’m wanting to address you about an issue with which the Church in Wales needs to engage through its Governing Body. The decision taken in October 2021 to provide a service of blessing for same-sex couples was a time limited provision. This will lapse at the end of September 2026 unless some further provision is made, and it is this to which we now need to turn our hearts and minds in prayerful and honest discernment. The bishops of the Church in Wales have agreed that the options open to us ought to engage us afresh and are seeking to bring us together in conversation this spring. The details of these meetings have now been agreed in each archdeaconry. I wish to stress the purpose of these meetings is to listen – respectfully and attentively. We believe there is wisdom in this kind of approach, which allows different voices to be expressed and heard without comment or censure. We don’t expect these voices to be pilloried or applauded. Our task is to hear from each other and to seek, as best we can, the wisdom of God in our conversations. The options open to us might see the provision we made in October 2021 simply lapse and nothing further. There would be no authorized liturgy or facility for blessing couples in same-sex unions. We could, of course, extend this provision and continue with our current practice. It is also open to us to offer a service of marriage for same-sex couples, and this would be a significant step for the church to make. My invitation to you all is to participate. Whatever kinds of reflection these meetings might offer and whatever decision the Governing Body might take, it’s our engaging with each other, with Scripture and tradition in a respectful way to which we must now give ourselves. Please do attend one of the sessions in your locality, and may God give us grace and peace to hear his voice.

[Anglican Communion News Service] In a statement about safeguarding in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA), the archbishop of Southern Africa, the Most Rev. Thabo Makgoba, has called the church to “redouble our efforts to eradicate all forms of abuse in the church and to campaign more vigorously for its abolition in wider society.” His Feb. 4 statement was made in response to the report of a panel of inquiry that investigated the contact of the British serial abuser John Smyth with the ACSA between 2001 and 2018. The Farlam-Ramphele Panel of Inquiry report on Smyth’s abuse was published on Feb. 3. The archbishop’s statement outlined proposals for action that relate to safeguarding in the Anglican Church of South Africa and to Anglican schools. Makgoba appointed the inquiry panel on Nov. 22, 2024, following the Church of England’s  Makin Review of 2024, which reported on Smyth perpetrating abuse of young men in the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. As Smyth had also spent time in South Africa, the inquiry panel was set up to explore what the Diocese of Cape Town had done to respond to warnings about his conduct and the potential risk he posed. In his statement the archbishop said, “I asked the panelists a very specific question: to examine our failure to respond adequately to a letter of warning received from the Church of England in 2013, and to make recommendations on our safeguarding process.” The inquiry panel said although no cases of abuse in South Africa had been reported to it, “the risk of a repetition of abuse by Smyth in his time in South Africa (2001-2018) was at all times clearly high.” The report refers to several areas for improvement in ACSA’s safeguarding processes. ACSA also published a seven-page summary of the report on its website. In responding to the report, Makgoba emphasized the need to effectively progress safe church processes and campaign about issues of abuse and gender-based violence in society as a whole. His statement also refers to research by the Human Sciences Research Council that reveals that one in every three South African women report experiencing physical or sexual violence during their lifetime. Makgoba’s full statement is available here. The Church of England offered a response to the report from the ACSA Panel of Inquiry; that is available here.

<article class="media media--image display--large"> <div class="image-container"> <div class="field field-media-image"> <img loading="eager" width="430" height="323" alt="" class="lazyload" data-src="/sites/default/files/styles/default_mobile/public/2023-11/CRC%20Logo.jpg?itok=hqUY2pIn" /> </div> </div> </article> <br /> A reminder of the CRCNA’s positions on immigration and migration, and a prayer for unity.

<article class="media media--image display--large"> <div class="image-container"> <div class="field field-media-image"> <img loading="eager" width="430" height="323" alt="" class="lazyload" data-src="/sites/default/files/styles/default_mobile/public/2025-02/crc-news-graphics_2025-2-5_christian-political-theology.jpg?itok=zQff0N1z" /> </div> </div> <div class="field field-image-credit">Redeemer University</div> </article> <br /> Dr. Jonathan Askonas spoke on Christian political theology while he was at Redeemer University to accept the Emerging Public Intellectual Award.

<article class="media media--image display--large"> <div class="image-container"> <div class="field field-media-image"> <img loading="eager" width="430" height="323" alt="Peter Sagal" class="lazyload" data-src="/sites/default/files/styles/default_mobile/public/2025-02/crc-news-graphics_2025-2-5_peter-sagal.jpg?itok=7VycLpeK" /> </div> <div class="field field-image-caption">Peter Sagal</div> </div> <div class="field field-image-credit">calvin.edu</div> </article> <br /> At the January Series, Peter Sagal talked about the U.S. Constitution and its meaning for United States citizens today.

<article class="media media--image display--large"> <div class="image-container"> <div class="field field-media-image"> <img loading="eager" width="430" height="323" alt="" class="lazyload" data-src="/sites/default/files/styles/default_mobile/public/2025-02/crc-news-graphics_2025-2-5_alastair-humphreys.jpg?itok=m7jd040a" /> </div> </div> <div class="field field-image-credit">January Series - Calvin University</div> </article> <br /> In his January Series presentation, Alastair Humphreys described some of his adventures large and small and encouraged his listeners to live adventurously.

<article class="media media--image display--large"> <div class="image-container"> <div class="field field-media-image"> <img loading="eager" width="430" height="323" alt="Reshma Saujani" class="lazyload" data-src="/sites/default/files/styles/default_mobile/public/2025-02/crc-news-graphics_2025-2-5_%20reshma-saujani.jpg?itok=XcDfraLE" /> </div> <div class="field field-image-caption">Reshma Saujani</div> </div> <div class="field field-image-credit">calvin.edu</div> </article> <br /> Reshma Saujani told listeners at the January Series to dismantle the myth of having it all, and to lift the burden we place on women to be perfect.

<article class="media media--image display--large"> <div class="image-container"> <div class="field field-media-image"> <img loading="eager" width="430" height="323" alt="" class="lazyload" data-src="/sites/default/files/styles/default_mobile/public/2025-02/crc-news-graphics_2025-2-5_michaela-o%E2%80%99donnell.jpg?itok=VU_5Wbba" /> </div> </div> <div class="field field-image-credit">January Series, Calvin University</div> </article> <br /> In her January Series presentation, Michaela O’Donnell discussed how to navigate life’s changes and transitions well.