Anglican Archbishop Addresses Culture Wars, Church, Politics and Race in a Time of COVID

VOL: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak to me. Archbishop, few apart from your fellow bishops know much about your early life in Atlanta, how you grew up and when you came to faith. Can you tell us?

ARCHBISHOP BEACH: David, simply put, I experienced brokenness as a child from my parents divorcing when I was 8, my mother becoming a hippy, our family being very fractured, and then, my mother’s arrest for selling drugs on my 12th birthday. Later that year, after going to live with my father, I attended a church camp and first heard about Jesus and his death on the cross and God’s promise of forgiveness and eternal life. By the campfire at that camp, I asked Jesus into my life following the promise of John 3:16. Later in my last years of high school, I got involved in Young Life and realized that although I had asked Jesus into my life, and attended church on Sunday, Jesus was not Lord of my life (I was!). I eventually came to the place of surrendering to His Lordship in my life, and have tried since that day (not always successfully) to keep yielding my life to Him.