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Living with litigation has become a way of life for us as members of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. For the past 4 ½ years, we have been under the cloud of a lawsuit brought against us by The Episcopal Church and its local supporters, seeking to deprive us of our buildings and assets. This has been a huge distraction from our focus on spreading the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and making new disciples for the Kingdom of God. What a relief and a blessing it was to have the Texas Supreme Court overturn the trial court judgment against us on August 30. So now we head back to the local court for a reconsideration of the dispute ”“ based this time upon neutral principles of law, and under this methodology we are confident we will prevail. Life goes on ”“ the litigation continues ”“ and we learn again how important it is to trust in the Lord in the midst of distractions and threats to our security.

The national leadership of TEC has misguided and misled local Episcopalians by encouraging them to support its litigation strategy, which sought to undermine the laws of the State of Texas regarding property, trusts and corporations.

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Christ Episcopal Church closed December of 2012 and the question has remained for the better part of this year what would become of the church property.

Now The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut has announced the decision to partner with the newly formed Farmington Valley American Muslim Center (FVAMC) organization to turn the Harris Road church into an interfaith hub. The partnership will bring interfaith educational programming to the facility, which the Diocese plans to lease to the FVAMC. The move aligns with the Diocese’s renewed effort in “recommitting itself to interfaith initiatives in new ways,” the Diocese said in the press release.

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Prayer and action can come together in common cause. It is an invitation to release our imagination for creative peaceful solutions in refusing the seemingly obvious action of moral retaliation.

Let us look for ways that reconcile, build the common good and nourish relationships ”” not increase our alienation and cause others only to hunker down while they wait for their own opportunity for revenge. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “we must learn to live in co-existence, or else face the prospect of co-annihilation.” Jesus said, “the one who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”

There is a better way. Our imaginations are better than this. We have not yet exhausted all of the options of a shared global life.

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“It’s much like a divorce,” said the Rev. J.T. Jeffords, minister at St. Paul’s Church in Conway, which was formerly St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “Everyone is affected.”

“In these situations, even if you win, you lose,” said Dan Ennis, dean of the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts and one of the leaders of the group of Episcopalians who left St. Paul’s last year and has now formed the community of St. Anne’s.

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Read it all and a link to the center website may be found here.

According to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion released Friday, the Iker group asserted that the canon “does not create a trust under Texas Law, but that even if it does, it was revocable and the Diocese revoked it” when it amended its own canons.

The justices also noted that they addressed similar flaws in an earlier case, Masterson v. Diocese of Northwest Texas.

In it, they said the canon, “simply does not contain language making the trust expressly irrevocable. … Even if the canon could be read to imply the trust was irrevocable, that is not good enough under Texas law.”

Read it all from the Star-Telegram.

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…It is our vocation as Communion Partners to navigate this narrow path between two dangerous extremes as we pursue the mission of the Church “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”To that end, six Communion Partner bishops (Greg Brewer, Paul Lambert, Ed Little, Dan Martins, Ed Salmon and Michael Smith) made a visit to Archbishop Justin Welby at his residence in Canterbury, England last week.

There we prayed together and discussed a range of issues concerning the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church. Also present was the Archbishop’s Director of Reconciliation, Canon David Porter.

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Bishop Frank Gray is down to just one remaining copy of “For Thou Art With Me: Interned in the Philippines,” the self-published memoir that chronicles his family’s three years in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines during World War II.

And after three months of filling in at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Rapid City, he plans to leave it as a farewell gift to his adopted congregation.

“We’ve loved the community and are happy to experience this beautiful part of the country,” Gray said recently of his summer filling in as rector at St. Andrew’s for the Rev. Kathy Monson Lutes, who was awarded a $50,000 Lilly Foundation travel sabbatical.

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In a statement released after the decision was handed down, Bishop vonRosenberg said he was “disappointed at the recent legal developments,” but added “we recognized that our journey involves many, many more steps than only this one.”

“We are involved for the long haul,” he said, noting the mission of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina “most definitely will not be defined by court decisions and legal processes but, rather, by the call and direction of our Lord”.

Bishop Mark Lawrence’s team said they were pleased by the ruling and the consolidation of the dispute between the national church and the diocese into a single forum.

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The Rt. Rev. Lawrence C. Provenzano, Bishop of Long Island, ordained melton, who has served the parish as a Deacon since May 1.

“It is a profound blessing to me to serve at Christ Church. Here, I have discovered a faithful community of people who love and care for each other and their neighbors, and who deeply love God,” said Melton.

Parishioners shared his enthusiasm and hope for the future. “We are all so excited about our new Priest-in-Charge, Fr. Melton, who is full of energy and new ideas. Since coming here in May, we have grown in many ways. We are looking forward to growth and renewal in the coming years under his leadership.” said Co-Churchwarden Marilyn Adamo.

Read it all and the parish website is there.

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As the new spiritual head of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, Bishop Douglas J. Fisher pledged to immerse himself in the fight for social justice causes that affect the needy.

Bishop Fisher, who was ordained a prelate in December, said he eagerly wanted to rally his flock to advocate for issues such as real immigration reform, gun control, and food, health and other programs geared to help the less fortunate.

However, he didn’t think that he’d be spending a chunk of his time, during his fledgling episcopate, battling developers interested in building gambling complexes around his diocese.

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The Episcopal Church in Maryland celebrated the life of its 11th bishop with all the formality and ceremony of a cathedral funeral Saturday, while remembering a man known as a fierce champion for society’s outsiders.

“Bishop David Leighton knew the burden of being a shepherd,” said the Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, the current bishop. “He experienced many times the hatred, bitterness and rejection that comes with the office whenever he stood up for those whom society wanted to neglect, or keep outside of the power structures in the church.”

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Bishop Paul V. Marshall of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem began a sabbatical Aug. 1 that will lead to his retirement on Jan. 1, 2014, from a position he has held for 17 years.

Marshall, 66, said he is retiring for reasons of advanced age.

At the beginning of the month, he turned over ecclesiastical authority to the diocese’s standing committee, which consists of five lay and five ordained members. The Rev. Canon Andrew T. Gerns of Trinity Episcopal Church in Easton is president of the committee.

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For the second time in recent months, U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck is weighing whether issues arising from the acrimonious Episcopal schism in eastern South Carolina belong in federal court.

As two bishops sat with their attorneys on either side of his Charleston courtroom, Houck heard about an hour of arguments Thursday on one bishop’s request for an injunction against the other.

Charles vonRosenberg, the bishop of parishes remaining with the national Episcopal Church, wants the court to block Mark Lawrence, the bishop of churches that left last year, from using the name and the symbols of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina.

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Issues arising from the Episcopal schism in eastern South Carolina are going back before a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck holds a hearing in Charleston on Thursday on a motion filed by a churches remaining with the national church. It asks that only those churches be allowed to use the name and symbols of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina.

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The Rt. Rev. Paul Lambert has been named chaplain of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Bishop Lambert was introduced June 20 during the brotherhood’s National Council meeting in Irving, Texas. He succeeds Bishop Keith Whitmore of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta.

“We’re honored Bishop Lambert will be our spiritual leader,” Brotherhood President said Robert Dennis, the brotherhood’s president. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew has more than 4,000 members in 390 Episcopal and Anglican churches in the United States and thousands more worldwide. “I’m looking forward to working with him to further the Brotherhood’s goal of bringing men and youth to Jesus Christ.”

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While all people are welcome in our fellowship and some of our dioceses provide for the blessing of same-sex unions, Christian marriage is reserved for a man and woman in the Episcopal Church.

Thank you for correcting this error.

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Standing at the entrance to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on 17th Street, the Rt. Rev. Chet Talton raised up the blunt end of a 6-foot-tall staff and pounded it against the door.

Again he pounded with his crosier, and again, each time the knock resounding through the 160-strong gathering. From inside, the church warden greeted him, and after a brief exchange, Talton entered.

So began a new era at St. Paul’s, itself the subject of a prolonged battle that, though settled at this congregation, continues to ripple through courtrooms across the country.

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Well before he became Rhode Island’s Episcopal bishop, the Right Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely lived in two worlds. As a priest and rector of a church in Bethlehem, Pa., he looked after people’s spiritual needs. Then he’d hop in a car and travel across the river to nearby Lehigh University to teach physics and astronomy.

His double role came about in part because the school had learned that before he became a priest he had earned degrees in both astronomy and physics. In agreeing to the post, however, Knisely had one condition: that he’d be allowed to teach class wearing his clerical garb.

But as Bishop Knisely recounted to packed pews at a forum last week at St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea, the priestly attire created quite a stir. Many were stunned to see a man of the cloth teaching science.

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

I hope that you and your families had a blessed 4th of July weekend and that each of you is making Sabbath space and time always to give thanks to God for the many blessings we receive. I pray also that, in your reflections, you are also giving prayerful intention to God’s call to you as a disciple of Christ.

Across the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, we continue striving to build up God’s Church and to fulfill our calling to become mature disciples of Jesus Christ, as articulated in our Strategic Visioning Process. That process is now being engaged by 23 of our 61 congregations, 7 of which are aligning alternate strategic planning initiatives with our stated trajectory to “Make, equip and send mature disciples in order to serve Christ not only with our lips but in our lives.” This is a substantial increase in strategic visioning and planning across the diocese, a trend we expect to continue over the coming year.

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After only two days of serving as the bishop of the Central Florida Diocese, I found myself marching in the streets of Sanford, FL and speaking at city hall at a city commission meeting due to the developments following the death of Trayvon Martin. As a bishop, I am a Christian leader for a geographic region of 15 counties, not merely a group of churches. This meant I had to act.

While my responsibilities extend to 87 congregations, the whole region and all of its citizens are within my spiritual oversight. What happened in the shooting of Trayvon Martin mattered to me because it mattered to the people under my care.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

[Mark] Bourlakas met with media outlets and friends of the Episcopal Church on Friday to discuss his goals as bishop. He previously served as dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Ky.

“I think that we are going to have to get used to moving beyond that establishment place where we decide who’s included and try to ask where we might be included,” Bourlakas said. “I think it’s going to be millennials and the culture around us that’s going to decide whether we’re included or not.”

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The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States has applauded last month’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law withholding national government recognition of same-sex marriages.

On 26 June 2013 the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori stated the decision reflected “the unmistakable movement toward civil marriage equality in the states over the past decade reflects the will of the people in those states to grant equal rights and dignity under the law to all married couples and families, and today’s decision will appropriately allow those families to be recognized under federal law as well.”

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There are few of us who have not learned by experience the remedial value of suffering when we have used it as a sacrament. It is astonishing how evanescent the memory of pain is, both in its acute and in its more prolonged forms, and how living a thing is the deposit made by a right correspondence with the opportunity hidden in the heart of suffering. This latter softens the disposition of that which at the moment seemed like unrelieved disaster and, as we look back, gives a benign expression to its severe countenance. To the growing character all his past suffering is a distinct asset, and from none of it would he be separated. He would not, if he could, eliminate a single pang.

The memory of past suffering and its deposit is varied. First and highest stands the vicarious suffering by which we lived in the lives of others and, without fault ourselves, shared the shame and sorrow of others, or else entered into the rich experience of blameless sufferers. Perhaps there is no pain quite like it for intensity. Then there comes the sharing of the common lot in which we receive our due portion of harsh treatment at the rough hand of those relentless forces which are resident in the nature of which we are a part. Some, many, there are who appear to be afflicted beyond measure and without apparent reason. The disparity of suffering is one of the most baffling features of the mystery and would be a fatal one were it not that the most perfect, the one altogether perfect, representative of the human family was afflicted beyond His brethren of every age, and not only took no hurt but even reaped a golden harvest for the world from the field of His suffering. With His stripes we are healed.

And then there are the pangs which we can trace directly to our own fault, and which are nothing more or less than the chastising of the benignly austere hand of God….

—The Mount of Vision: Being a Study of Life in Terms of the Whole, Chapter 8, by Bishop Charles Henry Brent

Long long overdue and worth some scrutiny.

[i]update: We’re “bumping” this up the page, since the Anglican Ink website is now working again after one or two days of problems. — the elves.[/i]