Wesley J. Smith’s recent essay (behind the National Review paywall) exposes a remarkable—and troubling—shift inside the world’s most prestigious academic and policy institutions: the rapid ascent of the “nature-rights” movement. What began as environmental fringe activism has now won the imprimatur of Cambridge University, major law societies, scientific journals, and global U.N. networks.
The core claim? Nature itself—mountains, rivers, glaciers, ecosystems—is a living person endowed with legal rights.
Cambridge’s new policy journal, Public Humanities, is devoting an entire issue to this concept. Its call for papers is shockingly explicit:
“We urgently need to change the way we relate to nature. One of the ways to do so is to consider nature as a subject of rights, as a living entity that has the right to exist, to be respected, to fulfil its natural role without arbitrary interference and to be repaired when its rights are violated. The constitution of Ecuador… has recognized nature as a subject of rights and calls it Pacha Mama (Mother Earth)… Dozens more countries have followed… The views of nature as a being is expanding in a variety of realms from the arts, to philosophy and the natural sciences.”
This is not metaphor. It is metaphysics—and law.
The Premise: A Living, Sacred Earth
Smith notes the obvious: most of nature is not alive. Sand, granite, and air do not possess consciousness, agency, or moral standing. Yet Cambridge’s editors treat “Pacha Mama”—the Incan earth-goddess—as a model for modern law. The result is not environmental stewardship but a revival of Gaia-style mysticism1Gaia mysticism is the belief that the Earth is a single living, divine organism—a conscious being that unifies all life. It treats natural systems as sacred and intelligent, often blending environmentalism with spiritual or neo-pagan reverence for “Mother Earth.”cloaked in academic respectability.
From a Christian vantage, this is Romans 1 in institutional form: worshiping creation rather than the Creator.
The Consequence: Human Beings Become the Problem
If nature has a “right” to exist without human “interference,” then several pillars of civilization become violations:
mining and resource extraction
large-scale agriculture
transportation networks
modern sanitation
energy development
Smith argues the implications are unavoidable: nature-rights law would make modern prosperity impossible.
This is not conservation; it is an attempt to curtail human exceptionalism—the biblical truth that humans, and not mountains, bear the image of God.
The Epistemology: Mysticism Over Science
The Cambridge initiative treats “indigenous lifeways” as privileged sources of knowledge about nature as a living being. Smith respects indigenous cultures, but he rightly notes:
these worldviews are pre-scientific
they cannot sustain modern economies
they are now selectively weaponized for ideological ends
In other words, the academy now elevates myth when it serves a preferred political religion.
The Politics: Anti-Capitalist and One-Sided
The call for papers warmly encourages scholarship on:
“the relationship between capitalism and the rights of nature.”
Conspicuously missing:
Any mention of the catastrophic environmental records of communist states—from the Aral Sea to Chernobyl to China’s ongoing ecological destruction.
When critiques run only in one direction, ideology—not science—is doing the talking.
Why This Matters: The Elites Are Converting
Smith’s final warning is stark. The nature-rights movement is advancing not because it is rational but because it is religious—an earth-religion that has seduced the institutional elite:
The deeper issue is anthropological. When inanimate nature receives “rights,” humans lose theirs. The Creator/creature distinction collapses. Stewardship becomes theft. Human beings become intruders, not image-bearers (i.e. agents of the Creator.)
What Smith describes is not environmental ethics—it is neo-paganism with legal authority, the inversion of the Christian doctrine of creation and the dignity of the human person.
Unless scientists, policymakers, and Christians recognize what is happening inside the intellectual centers of the West, this new earth-religion will not remain symbolic. It will reshape law, limit human flourishing, and weaken the moral foundation on which human dignity rests.
Source: Academia Embraces the Unscientific Earth Religion of ‘Nature Rights’ by Wesley J. Smith, National Review Online.
On October 22, 2025, a federal judge in Mississippi handed down one of the most significant rulings yet in the legal struggle over “gender identity” mandates. In State of Tennessee et al. v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, Judge Louis Guirola declared that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had exceeded its statutory authority when it redefined “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” under the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling does more than settle a technical dispute about regulatory authority. While the court’s purpose was to determine whether HHS exceeded its legal authority, its conclusion coincides with a deeper truth I affirm as a Christian — that our bodies are not social constructs or psychological projections, but part of the created order.
The law, in this instance, has returned to reality.
The Case: Tennessee v. HHS
In 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a sweeping regulation titled “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities.” The rule reinterpreted “sex discrimination” to include five categories: sex characteristics, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex stereotypes.
That redefinition would have required states, hospitals, and insurance providers that receive federal funds to cover or perform “gender-affirming care” — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries — regardless of conscience or medical judgment.
Fifteen states, led by Tennessee, sued. They argued that the rule went far beyond the authority Congress gave HHS in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination “on the ground prohibited under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.” And as the court noted, Title IX’s meaning of “sex” is biological, not ideological.
The plaintiffs weren’t asking for special treatment. They were asking that federal law mean what it has always meant: that “sex” refers to male and female — not to self-declared identities.
What the Court Decided
Judge Guirola’s 26-page opinion is a model of clarity. He ruled that HHS’s 2024 rule:
Exceeded its statutory authority under Title IX and the Affordable Care Act.
Misapplied the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which concerned employment discrimination under Title VII, not healthcare or education.
Was unlawful in its entirety and therefore vacated nationwide.
The opinion states plainly:
“Congress only contemplated biological sex when it enacted Title IX in 1972. Therefore, the Court finds that HHS exceeded its authority by implementing regulations redefining sex discrimination and prohibiting gender-identity discrimination.”
The judge further held that the refusal to perform or cover procedures for “gender transition” is not discrimination “because of sex.” As he explained, if a doctor performs mastectomies for women with breast cancer but declines to perform them for patients with gender dysphoria, the distinction is not based on the patient’s sex but on the diagnosis itself.
In other words: medicine is about biology, not ideology.
Bostock Doesn’t Apply Here
The court’s analysis directly confronts HHS’s reliance on the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling, which found that firing an employee for being homosexual or transgender violates Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination.
But Bostock explicitly limited its holding to employment law and said nothing about education, healthcare, or the broader cultural questions now before us. Title IX, unlike Title VII, contains explicit sex-based distinctions — for locker rooms, dormitories, sports teams, and bathrooms. Those provisions would be meaningless if “sex” were redefined to mean “gender identity.”
As Judge Guirola noted, interpreting “sex” as “gender identity” would create legal chaos. Schools could no longer maintain separate facilities for men and women. Sports competition would lose integrity. In the healthcare context, even legitimate medical distinctions — like sex-specific treatments — could be labeled “discrimination.”
That is precisely what the rule attempted to do, and why the court struck it down.
A Restoration of Constitutional Balance
Beyond the immediate issue of gender policy, this ruling restores a key principle of constitutional government: agencies do not have unlimited power to redefine law by executive fiat.
Quoting recent Supreme Court precedent (Loper Bright v. Raimondo), the court affirmed that statutes “have a single, best meaning fixed at the time of enactment.” Agencies are servants of Congress, not substitutes for it.
This is a vital reminder that the administrative state cannot function as an ideological laboratory for social experiments. The judiciary has begun to reassert the boundaries of delegated power, curbing the long pattern of executive agencies imposing cultural revolutions under the guise of “civil rights enforcement.”
The court’s language is unmistakable:
“Agencies do not have unlimited power to accomplish their policy preferences until Congress stops them; they have only the powers that Congress grants.”
That line deserves to be remembered.
Reality, Restored to Law
The court’s approach to statutory interpretation is refreshingly rooted in reality. Citing 1970s dictionaries, Judge Guirola observed that “sex” was universally understood to refer to biological distinctions between male and female. There was no concept of “gender identity” in 1972 law — because there was no such category in common understanding.
As simple as that sounds, it’s revolutionary in today’s legal landscape. The court refused to participate in the linguistic shell game that has corrupted public discourse. It chose to honor what words actually mean.
The Cultural and Moral Stakes
This case is not just about regulatory overreach or administrative law. It’s about truth-telling in a time of cultivated confusion.
For over a decade, we’ve watched federal agencies, medical institutions, and activist networks work to erase the distinction between man and woman — replacing embodied reality with subjective identity. In medicine, this ideology has demanded that doctors violate conscience, that parents affirm medical harm, and that the state compel participation in a collective fiction.
From a Christian Viewpoint: Creation and the Meaning of the Body
From a Christian perspective, this ruling affirms something far deeper than statutory interpretation. It affirms the created order.
Scripture tells us that humanity was made “male and female” (Genesis 1:27), and that this distinction is not arbitrary but sacramental — a sign of the divine image itself. As Notre Dame Professor Abigail Favale has written, the difference between man and woman “is not about completion, but communion.”
When law denies that created truth, it participates in what St. Paul called “the exchange of the truth of God for a lie.” The lie of our age is that the self is sovereign, that the body can be remade at will, and that nature itself must yield to the will of the autonomous individual.
This ruling marks a step back from that precipice.
Rejecting the New Gnosticism
Modern gender ideology, at its core, is a revival of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism — the belief that the material world is an obstacle to true identity, that salvation lies in self-knowledge detached from embodiment.
The court, perhaps without intending to, has reaffirmed the opposite: that embodiment is integral to who we are. Our bodies are not meaningless matter to be “corrected” by technology; they are the visible expression of the person God created.
When the judge wrote that Title IX’s use of “sex” referred to biological distinctions, he was defending more than a word. He was defending a vision of human integrity — one that law, medicine, and theology once shared.
True compassion tells the truth even when it hurts. The court did not deny anyone’s humanity; it denied the government’s power to redefine humanity.
Christians must remember: Love without truth is sentimentality. Truth without love is cruelty. But love in truth is the only path to healing.
This ruling doesn’t forbid care; it forbids coerced compliance with an untruth.
The Broader Implications
This decision will likely be appealed, but its reasoning aligns with the broader judicial trend of rejecting agency-driven redefinitions of “sex.” Other courts — particularly in the Fifth and Sixth Circuits — have already pushed back against the Biden administration’s interpretations of Title IX and the Affordable Care Act.
If upheld, the Tennessee ruling will shape how federal law treats sex distinctions in medicine, education, and beyond. It signals the end of a bureaucratic era in which ideology could rewrite biology by regulation.
For Christians and others who believe in the moral coherence of creation, this is not a moment for triumphalism but for thanksgiving and vigilance. The cultural pressure to conform to unreality will not disappear overnight. But truth has a way of resurfacing, and in this case, through the language of the law.
Conclusion: Living in the Truth
Judge Guirola closed his opinion with a reminder:
“Neither Defendants nor this Court have authority to reinterpret or expand the meaning of ‘sex’ under Title IX.”
The law is at its best when it reflects the created order rather than attempting to erase it. For years, American jurisprudence has been asked to pretend that male and female are mere social scripts. This ruling breaks that spell. For now.
In the words of St. Irenaeus, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” To be fully alive is to live in the truth of what we are — body and soul, male or female, created and loved by God.
“The future has arrived.” — GAFCON Primates’ Council, October 16, 2025
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) has declared that the long-awaited reformation of worldwide Anglicanism is now complete.
This isn’t a small breakaway faction. The churches represented by GAFCON — together with the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) — account for roughly 85 percent of Anglicans worldwide .
In other words, the center of gravity has shifted. What began as a reform movement is now the mainstream of global Anglicanism.
A Communion at the Crossroads
For decades, the Anglican Communion has struggled to maintain unity in the face of theological drift.
At the heart of the dispute lies a question as old as the Reformation: Is the Church ultimately governed by Scripture or by institutional authority?
When certain Western provinces — notably The Episcopal Church (USA), the Anglican Church of Canada, and, more recently, the Church of England — endorsed or blessed same-sex relationships, they crossed a clear biblical and confessional line.
GAFCON’s 2008 Jerusalem Statement described this as “the acceptance and promotion…of a different gospel…which undermines the authority of God’s Word written” .
That compromise, the statement warned, “tore the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together” .
What GAFCON’s 2025 Statement Declares
The latest communiqué, “The Future Has Arrived,” announces a decisive re-ordering of the Anglican world.
A. One Foundation of Communion
“The Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible…translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense.”
Unity, therefore, is defined not by institutional recognition but by obedience to Scripture.
B. Rejection of Failed Instruments
The statement rejects the four traditional Instruments of Communion — Canterbury, Lambeth, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting — citing their “failure to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.”
The 2008 and 2018 conference documents chronicle years of pleas and ignored warnings. Bishops who defied biblical teaching on sexuality were welcomed at Lambeth, while those who upheld Scripture were marginalized.
C. A Return to Anglicanism’s Original Shape
GAFCON affirms that it has not abandoned Anglicanism; rather, it has reclaimed it:
“We have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.”
The movement restores the pattern of autonomous provinces bound by the Reformation formularies — the Thirty-Nine Articles, Book of Common Prayer, and Ordinal — governed by a new Council of Primates.
The Crux of the Problem
The issue is not simply moral or political. It’s theological — a crisis of authority and repentance.
From the beginning, GAFCON identified a “false gospel” being preached within the Communion — one that:
Denies the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Redefines sin, blessing same-sex unions “over against the biblical teaching on holy matrimony.”
Treats sexual immorality as a human right rather than rebellion against God .
At the 2023 Kigali Conference, GAFCON condemned the Church of England’s decision to bless same-sex couples, calling it “pastorally deceptive and blasphemous to craft prayers that invoke blessing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
It also noted that “public statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury … in support of same-sex blessings are a betrayal of their vows to uphold Scripture.”
In short, this is not about politics — it’s about whether Christ’s Church will call sin what Scripture calls sin, and whether grace still means repentance and transformation.
A Global Majority Standing Firm
What makes this moment unprecedented is scale and maturity.
The GAFCON-GSFA alliance represents tens of millions of believers across Africa, Asia, South America, and Oceania — the true heartland of the Anglican faith.
“Together, these Primates represent the overwhelming majority (estimated at 85%) of Anglicans worldwide.”
These provinces have grown precisely because they have refused to dilute the gospel.
In places like Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Sudan, Anglicanism is vibrant, missionary, and thoroughly biblical. The “old center” in the West may be collapsing, but the faith itself is flourishing.
A Model for Christian Faithfulness
Even for non-Anglicans, GAFCON offers a compelling model:
Reformation, Not Rebellion
When human institutions compromise truth, reform is not division — it’s obedience.
As the apostles said in Acts 5:29: “We must obey God rather than men.”
The Courage of Global South Christians
These churches have demonstrated what fidelity looks like under pressure — rejecting Western funding rather than accepting moral revisionism.
They show that global Christianity’s future lies not in appeasement but in conviction.
Scripture as the Sole Foundation
GAFCON’s stance reminds us that Christian unity must be confessional, not sentimental. There is no communion without truth.
For Anglicans Still Within Compromised Provinces
For believers in provinces still aligned with Canterbury, the path forward is clear.
Local GAFCON branches provide fellowship and recognition without requiring institutional permission.
The Jerusalem Declaration (2008) remains the touchstone of authentic Anglican identity — Scripture first, mission always.
“Every person is loved by God, and we are determined to love as God loves… yet appropriate pastoral care does not include pretending that God blesses sin.”
The Future of the Faith
The GAFCON statement concludes with a simple, gospel-shaped refrain:
“To whom shall we go? We go to Christ who alone has the words of eternal life — and then we go with Christ to the whole world.”
The re-ordered Communion now called the Global Anglican Communion embodies that mission. It has reclaimed historic orthodoxy and the missionary heart that once defined Anglicanism.
For Christians everywhere, this moment asks hard but hopeful questions:
Are we willing to lose institutions in order to keep the gospel?
Can we learn from the Global South’s courage?
Will we measure unity by shared truth rather than shared bureaucracy?
The future of Anglicanism — and perhaps the future of orthodox Christianity in the West — will depend on how we answer.
