The Diocese of South Carolina is made up of 71 parishes with approximately 30,000 members. It says the parishes participating in the suit, along with the other supporting parishes, represent 74 percent of the members in the diocese.

Orangeburg’s Church of the Redeemer is one of the parishes that has signed on to the lawsuit.

“In 1857, the parishioners of the Church of the Redeemer built our first building on Boulevard across from the railroad tracks. In 1891, they put the church on logs and rolled it to its present site on Russell Street,” said the Rev. Dr. Frank E. Larisey, rector of the Church of the Redeemer….

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WCIV-TV | ABC News 4 – Charleston News, Sports, Weather

Officials of the Diocese of South Carolina said Friday that they filed a lawsuit against The Episcopal Church, saying it needs to protect its property from the national body.

A statement from the diocese said the lawsuit was filed in South Carolina Circuit Court. It also seeks to prevent The Episcopal Church from infringing on the protected marks of the Diocese, including its seal and its historical names.

“The Episcopal Church has every right to have a presence in the area served by our Diocese – but it does not have a right to use our identity. The Episcopal Church must create a new entity,” the Rev. Jim Lewis said in a statement.

Spokesman Neva Rae Fox said Friday that The Episcopal Church has not received the lawsuit and cannot comment.

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Read it all.

What is God like? God is like Christmas! It’s just like God to get the good news to the shepherds first. Who were these guys? They were working the late-night shift. Day laborers but at night. Guys trying to make a buck. No pedigrees. Outside of the city.
Outside of the system.

That’s who gets the light show, the angelic choir concert and the word first. By right the announcement should have happened in the temple, with all the people like me standing around. But it doesn’t. And we can’t tell God how God should be God. Isaiah said it best, “Our thoughts are not his thoughts; neither are our ways his ways.” What can God possibly be up to by this? It has to be that God wants to jar our sense of order so we might finally be open to his order, “to a more excellent way.” And new ways and new openness are born in the imagination. God wants our imaginations. That’s got to be it.

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he stage is sizzling. The crowd is howling and stamping its feet. The energy makes your skin crawl.

What do you do when your act follows that of a rock star? If Robert Hirschfeld knows one thing, he knows not to imitate the last act.

Hirschfeld becomes the full-fledged 10th Episcopal Bishop for the state of New Hampshire on Saturday in an investiture ceremony that will include several Episcopal bishops, including his predecessor, outgoing Bishop Gene Robinson.

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Read it all.

“Part of the sadness of this conflict is that a lot of people of different stripes felt themselves abused and weakened,” [Dorsey] McConnell said, adding that he will “strive less for grand theological consensus than for basic pastoral care.”

“I want people to know I love them and I pray for them and I don’t want anyone ostracized from any conversation.”

The new bishop is enthusiastic about the city that has called him as its first non-provisional bishop since Bishop Duncan helped found the ACNA.

“Pittsburgh has become a very young and cool place. There’s a wide open mission field,” he said. “Everybody out there is looking for two things: they’re looking for mercy and they’re looking for hope. I’m definitely a missionary bishop and this is a missionary diocese.”

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Pulling into the filling station on my way to Newtown in the early afternoon last Friday, the woman at the gas pump next to me asked: “How do we make sense of all of this?” She was a young mother, with tears in her eyes, on her way to our local elementary school to collect her children. She noticed my clerical collar and felt free to engage me about the horror and tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

My response to the young mother’s question was that there was no way we could make sense of what had happened. No explanation or rationale could assuage our shock, pain and grief. As a religious leader, I knew that my job was not to try and make sense of what had happened. Rather my job was to be there, simply be there, with those who had lost loved ones in the terrible rampage.

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There was a time, early in my episcopate, when it looked like the choice was either inclusion or communion. It looked binary, with no gradations between these two poles, and it looked as if it might be that way for a long time. The season after General Convention in 2003 was fractious, to say the least. Now, however, it looks like both inclusion and communion are available to us, at least provisionally. There are still issues of maintaining unity, both in our common life in this Diocese and in the lives of many of our congregations. I know this. And we must keep an eye on the horizon of the Anglican Communion.

But things are also changing, and changing much more quickly than I could have imagined. In the eighteen months following General Convention in 2003, for example, issues of human sexuality took over my life. Letters, phone calls, meetings, and email. Oh my the email. After Mary Glasspool’s election and consent to become bishop suffragan in Los Angeles in 2010, only seven years later, I got exactly one email. One. No one even took the trouble to ask me if I gave consent, or not. Something had shifted.

Read it all if you did not last time.

The Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence, Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina, received a letter of support, dated December 14, 2012, from the Steering Committee of the Primates of the Global South of the Anglican Communion. The show of support, signed by The Most Revd Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis, Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East; The Most Revd Nicholas Okoh, Primate of All Nigeria; The Most Revd Ian Ernest, Primate of the Indian Ocean; The Most Revd Datuk Bolly Lapok, Primate of South East Asia; The Most Revd Stephen Than Myint Oo, Primate of Myanmar; The Most Revd Dr. Eluid Wabukala, Primate of Kenya and The Most Revd Hector “Tito” Zavala, Primate of the Southern Cone recognizes Bishop Lawrence’s Episcopal orders and his legitimate Episcopal oversight of the Diocese of South Carolina within the Anglican Communion.

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Dear Friends in Christ:

We are shocked and overwhelmed by the horrendous tragedy of the school shooting in Sandy Hook. We hold the victims, their families, and all who are affected by the shooting in our thoughts and prayers for healing and strength. We pray that those who have died will be held in the arms of our loving God whose heart aches for those affected by this tragedy.

We bishops have been in touch with the Rev. Mark Moore, the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Sandy Hook which is adjacent to the school were the shooting took place. We have also communicated with the leadership of Trinity Church, Newtown, and we understand that the Rev. Kathie Adams-Shepherd, rector of Trinity Church is on the scene ministering to the bereaved.

We are departing immediately for Newtown/Sandy Hook to be of whatever assistance we can. We will be in contact when we have additional information.

We invite all clergy to open our churches for prayer.

Please keep all who have died, the one who has perpetrated the shooting, and all affected by this incident in your prayers. May the God who we await this Advent season bring us hope and new life in Jesus the Christ.

Faithfully, Ian, Laura and Jim

The Rt. Rev. Ian T. Douglas
The Rt. Rev. Laura J. Ahrens
The Rt. Rev. James E. Curry

“I support blessing same-sex unions, but some of my faithful fellow Episcopalians do not,” Rowe said in a statement. “The Episcopal Church in northwestern Pennsylvania is a place where people of good conscience can disagree charitably about such matters. We respect and love each other, and we are united in the hope and healing of Jesus Christ.”

Read it all and see the diocesan guidelines there.

This is a difficult time for the wider church, not just St. George’s. The diocese is looking at all of our ministries and what our response might be to the world in which we now find ourselves witnessing. One thing is certain, the way we have done church the past 200 years is not working now.

Given your family history at Spesutia Parish, I can only imagine how this must feel. Just as your ancestors were the leaders who made decisions in their time, this is our time. We are the leaders who have been entrusted with the stewardship of the church. As the chief steward of the diocese, the bishop takes very seriously his charge.

That episcopal stewardship extends to all property in the diocese. Each parish holds its property in trust for the diocese and each diocese, in turn, holds all church property in trust for The Episcopal Church. That is a matter of canon law.

Read both letters carefully.

The decision to allow same-sex blessings did not surprise St. James Episcopal Reverend John Mark Wiggers.

“Our church was moving in this direction for a while and so I expected this to happen, that we would approve a rite of same-sex blessing,” he said.

He said the church’s evolution has also impacted whether some of it members stay loyal to its teachings.

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Read it all.

A committee has been formed to create recommendations for how Oklahoma Episcopalians will respond to a same-sex liturgical blessing approved by the Episcopal Church USA earlier this year.

The Rt. Rev. Edward Konieczny, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, said he created the committee of clergy and lay people to ensure that Episcopal parishioners across the state have a say in how the same-sex rites are administered in the diocese. The committee is set to meet for the first time in a retreat Friday through Dec. 15….

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Founded in 1872, Louisville’s Woodcock Foundation has given scholarship money to needy college students for the past 50 years.

With assets that once totaled about $1.5 million, the Episcopal-church-affiliated charity gave away nearly $500,000 in the past five years alone to 60 to 70 students a year.

But now the foundation ”” named after the third bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky, the Right Rev. Charles Edward Woodcock ”” has only $8, and students who were awarded scholarships last year never got their money.

Makes the heart sad–read it all.

Bishop Lawrence and his family are requesting prayer for the Bishop’s mother, Bertha Ann Lawrence, who is gravely ill. We are also asking for traveling mercies for the Lawrences as they travel to be with her.

Almighty God, look on this your servant, Bertha,
lying in great weakness and comfort her with the promise of life everlasting,
given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From here:

Following the announcement that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church plans a trip to Charleston for a January 25-26 convention of those wishing to re-associate with the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of South Carolina released the following statements:

“They are certainly free to gather and meet, but they are not free to assume our identity. The Diocese of South Carolina has disassociated from the Episcopal Church, we’ve not ceased to exist. We continue to be the Diocese of South Carolina ”“ also known, legally as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina and as the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, of which I remain the Bishop. We are eager to get on with the ministry of Jesus Christ to a broken world! I suggest that the Steering Committee of this new group will want to do the same. A good first step for them would be to select a new name or choose another Diocese with which to associate.”

The Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence
XIV Bishop, Diocese of South Carolina
“I would like to make a point of clarification for those who think we became a new entity upon our disassociation. A brief history lesson seems in order. We were founded in 1785 (prior to the founding of the Episcopal Church). We were incorporated in 1973; adopted our current legal name, “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina,” in 1987; and we disassociated from the Episcopal Church in October of 2012. We did not become a new entity upon our disassociation. A new entity will need to be created by those who choose to leave the Diocese and re-associate with the Episcopal Church.”
The Rev. Canon Jim Lewis
Canon to the Ordinary, Diocese of South Carolina

“They insist on what others must do yet there is no written standard to support them, and at the same time they run roughshod over their own constitution and canons. They have created a tails we win, heads you lose world where the rules are adjusted according to their desired outcomes–no wonder we dissociated from a community like that.”
The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon
Canon Theologian, Diocese of South Carolina

I have been asked by our Vestry and a number of our members to publically state my position on recent events between the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and the national Episcopal Church. For the past four years I have attempted to teach and clarify issues as objectively as I could as they arose between the Worldwide Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church and our Diocese. I will continue to do that in the two upcoming congregational meetings. So there will be no confusion however I will now make a summary of my own thoughts clear.

Read it all (page 6 of pdf).

Read it all.

Read it all and there is more here.

Episcopal priests soon will be authorized to perform church weddings for gay couples in Washington ”“ the latest example of the American branch of Anglicanism striving to be more inclusive and diverse.

On Friday, a day after the first same-sex couples received marriage licenses in Spokane County, the top leader of the Episcopal Church arrived in Spokane to begin a three-day swing through the Inland Northwest.

“I know it’s something that many people in the church and beyond the church have been working for for a long time,” the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the church, said in an interview Friday.

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The Rev. Jim Lewis, Canon to the Ordinary for the diocese, told The Christian Post that the official report on the renunciation is inaccurate since Lawrence “never offered a renunciation of his orders.”

“The TEC canons are explicit that such a renunciation must be in writing, to the presiding bishop, expressing the desire to be removed,” said Lewis.

“None of those criteria have been met because it has never been the intention of Bishop Lawrence to renounce his orders. It is also not canonically possible to consider a request for renunciation while another disciplinary canon is in effect.”

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Please note that it will be the pseudo-diocese and its so-called “provisional bishop” who will instigate any lawsuits that are to be brought. Neither Bishop Lawrence nor any part of his diocese will resort first to court to protect the diocese’s real and personal property: they have no need to sue, as existing law gives them the upper hand, and besides, as we have just seen, Scripture teaches that it is wrong for Christians to go to secular court against fellow Christians.

But sue ECUSA will, and so also its pseudo-diocese, in a case of the latter being the blind led by the halt and the lame. For during that entire time period that they are in court, they will be consumed by their object of recovering so-called “ECUSA” property, by arguing and seeking to apply the precedents from other States, while they ignore the binding precedent which in no way is favorable to them under existing South Carolina law.

So we are in for much more folly and wheel-spinning before the pseudo-diocese of South Carolina can ever get to first base, let alone score a run.

Read it all (at the bottom).

The Bishop of South Carolina has received the news of his removal from the ordained ministry with sorrow, and a little pity. On 5 Dec 2012 the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church announced that she had accepted the voluntary renunciation of the ministerial orders of the Bishop of South Carolina. However, Bishop Mark J. Lawrence reports the presiding bishop’s actions have no canonical significance.

On the fourth anniversary of her deposing Bishop Jack Iker by the same canonical maneuver, Bishop Jefferts Schori announced she had deposed Bishop Lawrence. The Episcopal News Service reported that pursuant to Title III, Canon 12, Section 7 the Presiding Bishop “has accepted the renunciation of the ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church of Mark Lawrence as made in his public address on November 17 and she has released him from his orders in this Church.”

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Watch it all carefully.

This post remains ‘Sticky’ at the head of the page.

Quite simply I have not renounced my orders as a deacon, priest or bishop any more than I have abandoned the Church of Jesus Christ””But as I am sure you are aware, the Diocese of South Carolina has canonically and legally disassociated from The Episcopal Church. We took this action long before today’s attempt at renunciation of orders, therein making it superfluous.

Read it all.
_______________________________________

December 5, 2012

Dear Friends in Christ,

“For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” 2 Corinthians 4:5

The Presiding Bishop called me this afternoon to inform me that she and her council of advice have “accepted my renunciation of ordained ministry.” I listened quietly, asked a question or two and then told her it was good to hear her voice. I did not feel any need to argue or rebut. It is the Presiding Bishop’s crossing of the T’s and dotting of the I’s””for their paper work, not my life. I could point out the canonical problems with what they have done contrary to the canons of The Episcopal Church but to what avail? TEC will do what they will do regardless of canonical limitations. Those canonical problems are already well documented by others and hardly need further documentation by me. She and her advisers will say I have said what I have not said in ways that I have not said them even while they cite words from my Bishop’s Address of November 17, 2012.

Quite simply I have not renounced my orders as a deacon, priest or bishop any more than I have abandoned the Church of Jesus Christ. As I am sure you are aware, the Diocese of South Carolina has canonically and legally disassociated from The Episcopal Church. We took this action long before today’s attempt to claim a renunciation of my orders, thereby making it superfluous.

So we move on””onward and upward. As I write these words in the vesper light of this first Wednesday of Advent, the bells of the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul ring in the steeple beside the diocesan office, and I remain the Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina. We shall continue to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ in Word and Deed to a needy world, as well as ourselves. We need to experience afresh its power to set us free from sin, death, guilt, shame and judgment and to transform our lives to be like Christ’s from one degree of glory to another. As the Apostle has written: “The Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

I am heartened by the support of the vast majority of those within this Diocese as well as that of the majority of Anglicans around the world and that of many in North America who have expressed in so many ways that they consider me to be an Anglican Bishop in good standing and that this Diocese of South Carolina is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

My prayers for a wakeful and watchful Advent,

The Right Reverend Mark Joseph Lawrence
XIV Bishop of South Carolina

For background see also:
A.S. Haley””The Presiding Bishop Flouts the Canons Again
Presiding Bishop Says Mark Lawrence Says what he did not Say, right out of George Orwell
South Carolina Links

[This post is ‘Sticky’ – new entries below]
Bishop Lawrence (a) did not address any writing to the Presiding Bishop; (b) did not renounce his ordained Ministry; and (c) did not request to be removed from that Ministry. The elaborately crafted press release from the Public Affairs Office is simply a poor attempt to cover over a huge, public lie.

That huge, public lie has been told simply for the sake of the Presiding Bishop’s and ECUSA’s own convenience. It is convenient for them to be rid of Bishop Lawrence now, rather than wait until next March’s meeting of the House of Bishops — that way, they avoid the necessity of taking another illegal vote of “deposition” by less than the full majority of bishops that the Abandonment Canon requires; and they are now free to reorganize those in South Carolina wishing to remain with ECUSA into a pseudo-diocese with a puppet bishop whose immediate and most important mission will not be the welfare of his parishioners, but instead the filing of a lawsuit against Bishop Lawrence and the real Diocese’s corporate trustees, in an attempt to force them to turn over all of the Diocese’s property and assets.

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