Some Thoughts on Anglicanism

And Terraforming Mars

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Updates

It has been dry January in Leadville. We went from bitter cold (below -15 at night!) to some warm days in the 40s. There is still snow on the ground, but it is melting off the roads and the ski resorts are starting to see bare patches here and there. Hopefully we’ll get some decent snow in February and March.

Life continues apace. I don’t have any out-of-state travel scheduled until mid-March, so I’m embracing being home for a while! That means establishing some rhythms, including skiing and exercising, and being more present in relationships in town.

For our evening family (devotional) time, we are reading Job. It’s interesting to parse out what we should make of each chapter for the kids. We also have binders of thirty songs (one for each day of the month) and we usually sing the one for the day of the month and one fifteen more (or less) than that day. Recently, we’ve begun introducing some basic drum/guitar into some of the songs; as well as the occasional harmony. We’re not the Vontrap family, but Lord willing we will develop some musical chops in the coming years.

On the news front, I continue to be astounded at how much stupidity one comes across on X at any moment of any given day. Some people thrive on trolling. Others have figured out how to use X as a platform. But it seems like most people just use the platform to vent opinions or outrage and make a variety of ludicrous claims. Given how much content I create, and the fact that part of my job involves working with broadcast media, X is a platform I should learn how to use. But the learning process has been slow and frustrating.

I also need to figure out a better approach to overall online media engagement. My life increasingly touches the online space:

- Written commentary and policy research

- Broadcast media appearances

- Website for The Abbey

- This Substack Newsletter

- Metaphysician, Heal Thyself podcast (still pending)

- The Abbey Glass (Instagram/Website)

- Intellectual Retreats

- My personal website

If anyone has suggestions for how to build a social media and online presence across platforms and with a variety of content, I’m all ears!

Writing

As I mentioned in my previous newsletter, January was a great publication month. Since my last newsletter went out, my piece for The Hill on Trump’s tariffs came out as did my piece about Davos and the market alternative at the American Spectator.

I’ve got a couple short pieces in the works on the battles between state legislators who want to curtail ESG-investing and the banks and asset managers investing state assets. Legislators want to keep financial return at the forefront and exclude non-pecuniary ESG considerations. But they often face significant resistance from the managers of their pension funds – both the pension boards and the asset managers – as well as from many of the staff working for the state treasurer’s office. These opponents raise the possibility of losing hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars by passing legislation restricting public funds from being invested along ESG lines.

The arguments are usually pretty weak, and the forecasts or estimates of losses tend to be outlandish, but they are the “experts” and sometimes succeed in daunting legislators who may know very little about finance and financial markets. Fortunately, there are several organizations working to support legislators and supplement their legal and financial knowledge to counteract Blackrock (and a handful of other large asset managers) and its lobbyists as well as entrenched bureaucrats.

Reflection: Failing forward

A month into 2025 I can say with confidence that I’m failing in my attempts to simplify my life. If anything, it has gotten more complicated with a couple new commitments on the horizon. And day to day feels like a hodgepodge of activities; exercising, writing, meetings, teaching, time with family, all being mixed together in somewhat unplanned ways.

That being said, I think we’ve been making progress on the other fronts. I took the oldest two on a special ski day. I’ve taken Teddy swimming a couple times. We’ve got the kids using the stationary bike periodically. And we are taking baby steps towards morning family time discussing virtue and praying for our day.

Things are firing on all cylinders workwise. The flurry of recent political activity, especially tariffs and reversing ESG/DEI trends, feels a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But I am still relying more on my energy, rather than structure, discipline, and planning, to get things done. Perhaps that’s not quite right. I may have a highly idealized concept of what life could or should look like. As you can guess, I discipline myself to get a lot of things done, even if I have to scramble here and there, work on a Saturday or an evening, etc.

Well, that’s where things are – lots of family time and Scripture reading (in the mornings with a brother or two), Sunday school each week, and an upcoming Bible Study. Our church voted to move to an eldership model of church leadership. So a handful of us are participating in a vetting process (reading, questionnaire, interview, public teaching, etc.) over the coming months. Much of this process involves things I am already doing, just more!

Bookshelf

I admit I haven’t read as much over the past week as I would have liked. I recently finished a monograph about Anglicanism. Although I am not much interested in Anglicanism theologically (they share a great deal with Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists), I found their ecclesiology fascinating. The Anglican church seems like a federation of sorts loosely bound around some basic theology – very basic theology. They have 39 articles which form the core of their theology

Articles 1-8 – Reformed Theology

Articles 9-18 – The Way of Salvation

Articles 19 – 22 – Church

Articles 23-24 – Ministry

Articles 25 – 33 - Sacraments

But even these don’t seem to be a strict requirement for being Anglican. It seems like any congregation can call themselves Anglican as long as they don’t cross certain broad theological and ecclesiological lines. It’s much like Roman Catholicism without the Pope and without much of the hierarchy. Many people don’t realize how wildly different Roman Catholic churches and dioceses are from one another across the world. They are almost different religions at times.

Think about the many different sects of Protestantism. Something similar exists within the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, but they still identify within the same broad umbrella. One thing I learned from this book is that Anglicanism has much more grounding in Reformed theology than I had previously though.

Most of my knowledge of it comes in contrast to the Scottish Presbyterians of the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. From their point of view, the Anglicans were wish-washy, if not closet Papists. But this primer (Anglicanism: A Reformed Catholic Tradition) argues that Anglican theology and tradition were strongly influenced by Calvin and Zwingli – the Swiss church – rather than Luther and Lutheranism or Erasmus and Catholicism.

I can’t say I’m any more interested in becoming Anglican than I was before, but it gave me a much better understanding and appreciation of what Anglicanism is. I can also see why many of my friends either are Anglican or finding it intriguing.

Game Corner

Our recent game of choice is Terraforming Mars. It has similar elements to Wingspan, but with more complexity and options. The basic game play is pretty straightforward. Players are attempting to terraform and settle Mars. In doing so, they build cities, aquifers, and forests (greeneries). They are also raising the planet’s temperature and its oxygen levels. Once the initial aquifers are all played, and the temperature has reached its peak, and the oxygen level has reached its peak, the game ends.

Part of what makes the game fun is that there are a lot of resources to manage and cards that let you complete all kinds of different projects from bringing down asteroids or importing hydrogen to building dams and powerplants to managing wildlife or researching science. You can produce building materials of steel or titanium, you can produce energy or heat, and you can produce plants. Each of those resources has its own uses when it comes to playing cards or building things on the board. This is in addition to standard income credits used for just about everything.

There are also various milestone bonuses you can pay to claim and awards you can fund that will be won at the end of the game. Some cards have victory points. You also gain points (and also income) by increasing your “Terraform Rating” (TR) whenever you raise the temperature or the oxygen levels or place an aquifer. You also have different starting “corporations” and “preludes” to pick from. Some give you more money initially, others give you special production abilities or discounts on building certain cards and improvements.

Terraforming Mars has a steep learning curve for non-gamers, but the game play is simple enough that most anyone can enjoy playing if they take the time to learn the game.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!