David W. Virtue

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Journalist and author David W. Virtue is the former Religion Editor of the Vancouver, PROVINCE newspaper in Vancouver, BC Canada. He was born in Wellington, NZ and wrote for the Dominion newspaper before undertaking theological studies in London, Chicago and Vancouver. He has worked with a number of major US nonprofit organizations including World Vision International, the American Bible Society and the American Leprosy Missions as a writer and journalist. He is the author of three books on social justice and evangelism, and he is presently completing a memoir on the life of Malcolm Muggeridge. Dr. Virtue has been writing about Anglican issues for more than two decades and attended The 1998 Lambeth conference in Canterbury, England. He has lectured on "Christianity and Culture" as well as journalism and has traveled extensively throughout the world, especially the Middle East, writing on matters of religious concern. Dr Virtue started an online Anglican News Service in 1992 initially called Virtuosity. The News Service was forced to change its name to Virtueonline. Virtueonline [1] has over three million unique visitors a year.

Virtue is considered a controversial figure within Anglicanism because of his harsh rhetoric often directed towards gays and lesbians within the church. In his stories, Virtue champions himself as "orthodox," while calling homosexuals "sodomites" and progressives "revisionists"

On August 4, 2003, Virtue raised a last minute objection at the Episcopal Church's General Convention to the ratification of the election of Gene Robinson, a openly gay man in a non-celibate partnership, to the office of Bishop of New Hampshire, claiming "Gene Robinson’s website is linked by one click to 5,000 pornographic websites." [2]. An investigation revealed that the link was not on Robinson's website, but that of a chapter of an organization Robinson supported, but had not been affiliated with for two years. The organization claimed it was not aware of the pornographic link and removed it when they were alerted to it.

Dr. Virtue is married to the former Mary Shields Hendrickson and has three grown children. He and his wife live in West Chester, PA.