Ash Wednesday Invitation for the Diocese of Texas

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Waco, Texas

Grace and peace in the name of Jesus Christ, 

This is a call to repent. 

I feel as though we all have a lot to repent for just now.

In light of our Wednesday services that are upon us today, where every member of the Body of Christ throughout our Diocese has the opportunity to receive ashes in some form, I wanted to take this opportunity to elaborate on why I believe our confession and repentance matter, particularly as we enter this season of Holy Lent.

Repentance and Ash Wednesday are ancient observances kept by God’s holy Church. From the earliest days of Christianity, faithful believers prepared themselves in anticipation of the feast of our Lord’s passion and resurrection; Lent became a time of penitence and fasting when those preparing for Holy Baptism were taught to repent of their sins and reconciled to the fellowship of God’s faithful people before being washed clean in Christ’s Name. Lenten discipline, therefore, is not some private expression of guilt masquerading as piety. It’s how the Church remembers and celebrates the Gospel: pardon and forgiveness aren’t just concepts. They are sacramental, and every Christian needs regular restoration through repentance and faith.

For that reason, please hear this call to repentance as offered on behalf of the Church for the sake of your soul: Let us observe a holy Lent, by the mortification of self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and abstinence; and by reading and meditating upon God’s holy Word. If you need a starting point, start here. Come to worship this Lent. 

Read the Collect appointed for the day, and pray to God that he will “create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” 

Take up God’s Word anew: the exhortation of Joel to “Return to the Lord”; the words of Isaiah that fasting from pride and selfishness breaks every chain and binds up the wounds of neighbor and community; St. Paul’s plea that we “Be reconciled to God”; and Matthew’s gospel where our Lord instructs us to pray, to fast, and to give alms—not for others to see, but in the quiet intimacy of our Father who sees what is done in secret.

Come to worship if you can, and if we have accessible services in your area, please come to receive ashes as well. It is a startling sign and moment to be reminded of our mortality. We sit under words that we spend the majority of our lives trying desperately to avoid hearing: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” 

The words aren’t meant to shame us into obedience, but set us free from delusion. We are reminded that we are dust. Mortal. Finite. Broken. But the ashes don’t end there. They are impressed upon each member of Christ’s Body who is reminded that while we are dust, we belong to the Crucified and Risen Son of God who is all mercy. The God who declared all of creation good at its making still loves His Creation, and in Christ Jesus he embraces and forgives all who truly repent.

The reason Lent is so important for embodied spirituality is that Christianity is not disembodied spirituality at all. 

Followers of Jesus do not deny our bodies when we confess that we sin in thought, word, and deed. Nor is repentance simply the correction of bad ideas. God has graciously placed himself within our flesh and tick of time: through breath and hunger, tears and touch; through bodies kneeling and bodies standing, through water and oil, bread and wine. 

Lent reminds us that grace is big enough to meet us where we are: to transform the embodied habits that make us who we are. How do we eat? How do we rest? How do we speak? How do we spend money? How do we love? How do we react when we’re tired? When we’re scared? Fasting isn’t a punitive exercise. It’s training ourselves to listen with our whole selves. Self-denial isn’t self-loathing. It’s learning the discipline of joy. Prayer moves our bodies. We don’t just think about Jesus—we go to Jesus.

It is a time for telling the truth, about how prideful we are; about how impatient we can be; about how we neglect to pray; about how we’ve hurt our neighbor; about how we take this good earth for granted. and crying out with the psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” It is a time to practice loving our neighbor as concrete, embodied people. It is a time to repair what has been broken; to care for what we’ve ignored; to practice generosity; and learn to rejoice in obedience once again. This is how repentance becomes more than regret over our sin. It becomes the lifelong work of turning heart, mind, and body toward the Lord.

Please know that whether you are joining a church in person this Lent or worshiping online from your kitchen table with your phone in your hand, you are not alone. Let us go to the Lord our maker and redeemer, kneel before him, and make a right beginning. That by His grace, we may work out our salvation in fear and trembling, trusting that He is able to accomplish this good work in us, to the praise of His glorious Name.

Faithfully in Christ,

+The Bishop of the Diocese of Texas

The Fast and Prayers God Desires

Listen to Bishop Doyle's sermon, "Epiphany 5A - The Fast and Prayers God Desires" held at St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church, Manor, TX

More at www.texasbishop.com

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Truth, Discernment, and the Refusal of Enforced Unreality

When powerful institutions command people not to believe their own experience, Christians ought to recognize it as abusive. Not because all experience is trustworthy or reliable. But because God does not require Christians to surrender reason, conscience, or discernment to the state. Christianity treats truth as a moral obligation and coerced falsehood as spiritually deforming. This diagnosis may seem partisan, but it’s actually confessional.

Anglican theology—especially in its comprehensive form—is well-positioned to explain why. Below, I’ll outline a theological vision rooted in Scripture and the Christian tradition that names the dangers we face and why the church cannot simply capitulate to them.

Truthfulness as Moral Obligation

Christian discipleship isn’t truth optional. It begins by taking reality seriously because creation matters, and God is faithful to what God has made.

Do not bear false witness. This commandment (Exodus 20: 16) prohibits more than perjury; it names a collective sin: the refusal to perceive social reality truthfully—the bending of shared perception and memory for political ends. False witness defames others, but it does something to truth itself: It socializes deceit.

Truth in the New Testament is relational: Christians are commanded to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) and to “put away falsehood” (Ephesians 4:25). Jesus names deception as bondage (“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” John 8: 32), and false teaching belongs to Satan, “the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Insofar as authorities train Christians to distrust reality unless validated by power, they’re not doing politics; they’re undermining truth-telling as a Christian virtue.

Richard Hooker grounds our moral obligation in Christian anthropology: What it means to be human. We’re created subject to law—but not arbitrary power. Rather, we’re under “the law which reason teacheth all men” (Laws I.8.3). To demand that Christians deny reality is to violate the moral agency that God gave them.

Discernment Is Not Defiance

Discernment is biblical; Christians must practice active judgment.

Test the spirits is not limited to testing the gifts of charismatic ministry; Christians “test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Paul tells Christians to refuse conformity to the world and be renewed by the transformation of truth. This presupposes that minds can be formed—not surrendered.

The Bereans are commended not because they obeyed the Magisterium but because they judged it (Acts 17:11). Anglicans treat this approach to teaching and learning as normative and mutual. Reason is not rebellion; it’s God-given and meant for faithful discernment.

When governors demand that people “Stop trusting your eyes; trust us,” they’re asking for functional faith—but without revelation or repentance or grace. It’s like trust without verification because the object of trust is not God but power.

Hooker is clear that political authorities may influence judgment. They may never command it. Unexamined assent is not obedience; it’s obedience training.

Political Authorities Are Not Omnipotent

Christian theology does not say: Be obedient to the state. Christians pray for their governors and live in hopes of a common good (1 Timothy 2: 1-2), nor does Scripture demonize government (“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,” Romans 13:1). Where God grants civil authority, it can mediate justice and serve societal flourishing.

But Scripture also gives limits:

Jesus’ disciples weren’t crucified for defying Caesar. They were martyred when commanded to worship him—and violate God’s will. Political authority does not have the final say.

Nor does Revelation hold up patience as a virtue for Christians living under pagan rule. The Book of Revelation contains perhaps the church’s clearest warning against governments becoming beastly.

Authoritarian regimes are not new, but they have a timeless spiritual signature.

Power becomes demonic when it demands epistemic loyalty: When citizens are expected to trust an official story over their consciences and lived moral realities.

“We reject and despise…” says the Barmen Declaration, “the false doctrine that political powers and organizations, and national and racial interests, may set themselves above this Church and present themselves as its lord.”

Experience Isn’t Ultimate—but Governments Aren’t God

To be clear: This is not an experience-only argument. The Christian faith trusts more than what we see with our eyes. Perception can deceive; memory is faulty; sin infects our judgment.

Anglicans have historically been rightly suspicious of sola experientia. Anglican theology has always affirmed that we test our experiences—and rightly so. Through scripture. Yes. Through reason. Of course. Through tradition. Certainly. Through prayer. Undoubtedly. And through communal discernment.

This conversation is not about trusting our experiences at all costs. It’s about who—or what—we trust instead. The alternative to fallible sense perception is not healthy epistemological whateverism. It’s not obedience to state authority. Experience-betraying commands teach citizens to distrust their moral and empirical perceptions. When governors say “Do not believe what you just saw; repeat this slogan,” they’re demanding epistemic loyalty.

Christianity cannot enmesh itself in any power. Anglicanism has resisted such monistic collapses by refusing both absolutized subjective experience and forced-unreality politics. Truth is always sought within communities, remembered moral ecologies—among scripture as norming witness, reason as God’s gift to humanity, tradition as communal memory and testing, and experience as where reality encounters us, particularly through the faces of our neighbors.

God doesn’t require us to turn our brains off. Idols do.

Image of God Includes Moral Agency

To claim our experiences have been seized by autocratic horror isn’t hyperbole if we recognize what’s at stake: our moral agency. God created humans in God’s image, which means several things, including our shared capacities for perception, judgment, conscience, and truthful speech. A regime that replaces trained dependence on experts with trained incapacity to trust our own moral perception intends to degrade that reality.

As Newman memorably puts it, conscience is “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ” (Letter to the Duke of Norfolk). Our consciences make us responsible to God and are thus bound up with Christian discipleship. Our consciences can err, but we may not be commanded to sin. Discipleship is Transformation, Not Programming

The answer to “Don’t believe your eyes” is not hypervigilance. It’s faithful discernment: wary, not trusting; sober, not cynical. Instead, Christians should pause before panic, seek confirmation, look for corroborating evidence, examine fruit, refuse cynicism, and—when human dignity and lives are at stake—hold fast to conscience.

The public responsibility of the church, writes William Temple, is to “announce the principles of Christianity and show where particular social institutions or movements harmonize with or depart from those principles; and to equip Christian laymen to play their part.” This task includes clashes over truth itself.

To err is human; to repent, Christian. But Christians cannot be trained to disregard reality to remain loyal to the state.