Kendall & Elizabeth at Kendall’s ordination:

preaching as a seminarian at St. John’s Johns Island SC

Kendall speaking at the Plano gathering, 2003:

More wonderful pictures celebrating Kendall, his lovely bride Elizabeth, and their family:

Kendall’s daughter Selimah got together with some of her friends from her acapella group to wish Kendall Happy Birthday:

As our family informant noted, Kendall can be very silly at times. Here are a few more pix from Kendall as he was growing up, with a few special shots celebrating Kendall’s love of a good time, and his wonderful. infectious and well-known laugh! We’ve provided a few captions sent to us along with the pictures, but once again: creative caption submissions are welcome!

Kendall in elementary school:

Kendall is quite silly some times, here playing the “hysterical fan”

Kendall in high school:

He is known for his laugh – it is recognizable from a distance:

From Kendall’s son Nathaniel:

[i]we’re hoping to get a higher resolution copy of this so that the text is visible – stay tuned[/i]

Update: Here’s the text

Dad, You’re 50! But remember it has its benefits:

-Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size

Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can’t remember them either.

In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.

See! It’s not that bad!

Happy birthday – N

Selimah, Kendall’s youngest daughter has a lovely birthday greeting for her dad!

Thanks to a wonderful “guest elf” within Kendall’s family, who shall remain anonymous, we’ve got some WONDERFUL pictures of Kendall we’ll be sharing throughout the day as part of Kendall’s 50th Birthday Bash. Creative captions are welcome!

This is a photo Kendall’s mother loved of her two boys: Randall and Kendall (Kendall
is the older on the right)

Early practice for ministry?? As our informant noted, this is Kendall playing with his brother,
but it looks like baptizing!

In honor of Kendall’s birthday, we’ve put together a quiz to test how well you know Kendall. Answers will follow later in the day, and there may be some clues posted throughout the day. We elves are open to suggestions as to what prize to award the winner!

1) Where did Kendall grow up?

2) When did Kendall meet Christ personally?

3) What college (university) did he attend? Bonus points if you know his major?

4) Where did Kendall meet his wife Elizabeth?

5) How many children do Kendall & Elizabeth have? Bonus points for names….

6) What was the topic of Kendall’s PhD dissertation? Bonus points if you can tell where he earned it.

7) How many times has Kendall served as a deputy to General Convention from South Carolina?

8) How many dogs do the Harmon family currently own? Bonus points for name(s) and breed(s).

9) What are some of Kendall’s favorite hobbies? [lots of room for creative answers on this one!]

10) What are Kendall’s current positions in the Diocese of SC?

Abigail, Kendall & Elizabeth’s oldest daughter, sent us her birthday message to her dad to share on the blog:

Kendall turns 50 today!! To mark this occasion, we elves, with the encouragement and collaboration of certain of Kendall’s close family members, are hijacking the blog today, totally unbeknownst to Kendall! We have lots of fun surprises planned, so check back often throughout the day.

This post is sticky – new entries follow below


Kendall turns 50 today!! To mark this occasion, we elves, with the encouragement and collaboration of certain of Kendall’s close family members, are hijacking the blog today, totally unbeknownst to Kendall! We have lots of fun surprises planned, so check back often throughout the day.

We’d like to invite all TitusOneNine readers to join in the celebration of Kendall’s 50th birthday today. We encourage you to share your greetings, and best wishes on this thread. Even more, we would invite readers to share their appreciation of Kendall, a remembrance of some time you met him or heard him speak, a funny story… Help us all celebrate his life and ministry today by joining in!

Note: you can also honor Kendall by contributing to the open thread Kendall prepared for today and share your own favorite birthday memories.

For the Easter season and a major special occasion in the family, I am taking Monday and Tuesday off from full blogging and will be back Wednesday. There will be one open thread each day–thanks–KSH.

Check it out.

I don’t often do this, but it would mean a lot to me if you would not simply read, but read, think and pray about this entry.

“I’ve always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.” ~On the English people

Of course, said Gandalf. And why should not they prove true? Surely you do not disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!
–(J.R.R. Tolkien’s character) Gandalf

The Lord of the Rings is about how men, including the humblest of men, choose to act in the face of moral urgency and engulfing peril. It is about the power of humility, the wisdom of mercy, the glory of self-sacrificial valor, the false glamour of evil, the workings of grace, and above all, the necessity of faith. Put more plainly, LOTR screenwriter Phillippa Boyans says it’s about goodness — an idea that leaves many moderns skeptical and confused. “We come from a generation that has never had that question put to us,” she said in an interview. “It was put to the generation of World War I. It was put to the generation of World War II. ‘What are you prepared to do?’ ‘Are you going to hold on?’ ‘Are you going to keep going?’ ‘Do you have to live?’ ‘Is this a world worth fighting for?’ All of this is in there.”
–Rod Dreher

I will take comments, but only ones that wrestle with the content here and its call for courage, faith and hope. Many thanks–KSH

May I take this opportunity to wish all blog readers a blessed and happy Christmas 2009–KSH.

Somehow our son Nathaniel made the crew team at Boston University. The whole family has come to see his event this morning beginning at 8 a.m.–woo hoo! KSH.

I have a slew of emails and telephone calls asking what I think of this latest development. Herewith a few thoughts for starters.

(1) It represents a huge indictment of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Many people question Rome’s motivations, but I believe Rome, which has been watching Anglican developments like a hawk in recent years, wanted Anglicanism globally to succeed. Their response to the Windsor Report, for example, was quite favorable. This move to me shows they do not believe the Anglican moment in history to help global Christianity can take place sufficiently under Rowan Williams.

(2) It represents a sweeping judgment on Anglicanism in particular. Rome believes, as John 17 says, that the world may know the gospel if Christians are one as Jesus and the Father are one. Such a unity is only possible through a church with catholic order and evangelical faith. Rome has watched global Anglicanism evolve and has seen the Instruments of Unity be used repeatedly, over a period of time, and they have judged that Anglicanism itself is not and will not work for the cause of real global Catholicism going forward.

(3) It repesents a judgment that the real story going forward is between Rome and the East. Do not underestimate the significance of the fact that in this present unusual “arrangement,” if I may call it that, Rome has drawn the line at Episcopal celibacy. That is a gesture Eastward, among many other things.

(4) It represents a sense that only an external action will have any benefit to Anglicanism going forward. Let us not kid ourselves. Rome put a lot into ecumencial conversations with Anglicans because they believed that more internal mechanisms and persuasions were possible. Now, in their judgment, they are not. They don’t see a future of greater Anglican unity they see one of greater Anglican splintering. At this level, it represents a shout which one wonders if any Anglicans will hear–KSH.

I have been travelling and am in Northwest Arkansas for the Anglican Digest Annual Board meeting. Please pray for us–many thanks.

Abigail is a junior at the College of Charleston, Nathaniel a freshman at Boston University, and we just dropped Selimah off at The Hill in Pennsylvania. So it is just Elizabeth and I and the dogs, cats and birds, and sooner than we necessarily were ready for.

When I saw Mary Hays at the memorial service in Pittsburgh for Alex Heidengren recently, she said of the empty nest stage “It is great!” and I am trusting her to be right but like all transitions there is loss as well as gain. The good news is we are not in charge–KSH.

Anyone else fell this way? I do love the fall but boy it has come too quickly somehow.

Elizabeth and I dropped our son Nathaniel off at Boston University yesterday to begin his freshman year. Where does the time go–KSH?

There has been much posted on the blog about this. Put “South Carolina” into the “search” function on the right if you need to review the posts. I will obviously be preoccupied today–KSH.

In the year 1849 I was stationed at Baton Rouge, and married Miss Frank E. Stuart, whose honored sons and one living daughter now rise up and call her blessed.

Passing over several years in which I was engaged as the pioneer of temperance and prohibition work, I found myself the pastor at Macon, Miss[issippi], during the war, where a singular episode occurred.

The Mississippi Legislature, driven out of Jackson by the Federal army, took refuge at Macon. In the course of legislation, a bill putting all ministers in the State up to sixty years of age in the army, and favored by Governor Clarke, passed to its third reading, before the final vote was taken. Hon. Locke Houston, speaker of the House of Representatives, invited me to open the session with prayer.

In the course of the prayer I invoked the Divine Father: “Have compassion on the members of the Mississippi Legislature, who, without the fear of God before their eyes, have laid violent hands upon the ordained ministry of Thy church, placing carnal weapons in their hands, bidding them to go forth to war as instruments of wrath and blood, instead of messengers of love and peace.”

“O Lord, for this wicked act, which stands out in all its gloomy isolation without any parallel among the civilized nations of the earth, we invoke pardoning mercy.”

“O Lord, let not this vile act of legislation fall in dire disaster upon the lives of our people.”

Continuing in this strain of thought, and holding them up before the great Jehovah of all worlds, was somewhat startling in its nature.

Their indictment before the august Chancery Court of Heaven was something unexpected, and greatly surprised them; and when the final vote was taken they reversed their previous action and struck out of the bill all ministers engaged in their regular work.

This prayer, and its results, invoked the wrath of the governor, and much of the secular press.

–The Rev. John W. Harmon, Select Sermons (Paulding, Mississippi, 1894), pp.2-3. The author is my great great grandfather (!)–KSH.

Because the blog went caput this series was not able to be finished. But did you notice how almost no aspect of the ecumenical dimensions of our decisions came into play, esepcially in the two highly publicized decisions?

I honestly cannot remember a time in my life in the Episcopal Church where I have read more mistakes in less time than in the last two to three weeks. Please do not believe everything you read and make sure to fact check and research material, a point we have stressed time and again on this blog.

A case in point is this recent piece by Diana Butler Bass. I enjoyed Dr. Bass’ Standing Against the Whirlwind : Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America which was well written and researched (and is quite relevant to our present time by the way), and so was baffled to see such a poorly written piece by her on Beliefnet.

The relevant section of her article for our purposes reads this way:

The Anglican Church of North America, the umbrella group for conservative Episcopalians who have left their denomination over women’s ordination and full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons, has long claimed over 100,000 members. Recently, they admitted that only 69,000 persons in 650 churches in the USA and Canada have joined their association. There are 2.2 million Episcopalians in the United States and approximately 1 million in Canada. Thus, the conservative group–the one that has garnered so much media attention in recent years is a very small percentage of the entire North American Anglican membership–some 2% of the total. And with their rigid opposition to women’s ordination, it is hard to imagine that this group will find much appeal with young North Americans.

Now for the record, I am not in ACNA. Certainly her description of the reason for the departure of ACNA is not one ACNA would agree with just for starters. It is over issues of Christology, marriage, the authority and interpretation of Scripture, the nature of the church, and the standards of Christian leadership that this controversy is fundamentally about.

According to ACNA’s own website, ACNA still claims 100, 000 members. That claim has not changed. The reference to the 69,000 number is for Average Sunday attendance: according to the ACNA site ACNA claims “average Sunday attendance of 69,197 (as of spring 2009)” [and there is a even more about ACNA numbers here]. So follow along. Dr. Bass suggests the claim of membership in ACNA has changed. It hasn’t. Then she suggests ACNA is claiming a number for membership which ACNA is claiming for average Sunday attendance. This is elementary category confusion. As anyone in parish ministry knows membership and Sunday morning attendance are very different.

Having made all these errors, Dr. Bass then compares the wrong category of numbers for ACNA and TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada:

There are 2.2 million Episcopalians in the United States and approximately 1 million in Canada. Thus, the conservative group–the one that has garnered so much media attention in recent years is a very small percentage of the entire North American Anglican membership–some 2% of the total.

Do you see how she got the 2% figure? She took the roughly 69,000 figure, which is for Average Sunday attendance, and compared it to the membership figures for TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. But this is comparing apples to oranges. The Episcopal Church has not been using average Sunday attendance figures for all that long, but you may know that whereas in the 2004 tables TEC claimed ASA of 833,672, by the 2009 tables that number is down to 768,476.

The 1 million number Dr. Bass gives for the Anglican Church of Canada membership is way off. One of the recent numbers I found was 641,845, but of course, this is again membership not Sunday morning attendance. I would honestly be surprised if average Sunday attendance in the Anglican Church of Canada is more than 200,000 actually (many of you know I lived and worshipped in Canada for two years), but let’s use 300,000 for our purposes.

Now, if you use these figures, and compare apples to apples, the ASA of ACNA is approximately 6.5% of the ASA of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada combined, more than three times the percentage total Dr. Bass gives.

You would think given the large number of errors that I would be finished. But no. She continues:

And with their rigid opposition to women’s ordination, it is hard to imagine that this group will find much appeal with young North Americans.

Well, this would come as news to my friend Mary Hays, an ordained woman quite involved in ACNA, to pick just one example. ACNA is trying to protect two perspectives on women’s ordination, as anyone in the movement itself could have told Dr. Bass if she had asked.

What an embarrassing effort Dr. Bass has given us in this article. I sincerely hope she will improve in the future–and please, do not believe everything you read–KSH.

Do Episcopal parishes teach the basics?

When I finished seminary in 1987 I came out with youthful idealism, energy, and too much arrogance, among many other things. I also believed I needed to be unapologetic about teaching and preaching on the most basic questions.

For example, I taught for two years through the Book of Acts. What was the gospel they were proclaiming I wanted to know. What was their understanding of mission? Who did they think Jesus was? What did they believe about the church?

After three years in the parish where I served my curacy, I left the parish (and the country) to pursue a doctorate. This allowed me the luxury of reflecting on many things, including my three year curacy.

My deepest conclusion: I had failed to be basic enough. I had made too many assumptions. I had used too much Christian vocabulary without defining terms. The bottom line was my instinct was right but my implementation left a lot to be desired.

When I asked myself why, my sense was it was partly out of fear. It takes a lot of courage to ask someone to describe the exact nature of the God he or she believes in, to wrestle with the doctrine of Original Sin, to probe the mystery of the Atonement and the Cross, to delve into the depths of what heaven really is and is not like.

So consider this question: if we look at the parish of which we are a part, and its preaching and teaching, how are we doing in terms of asking and answering the most basic of questions? Are we daring to look at the roots of the roots?

Jesus talked about God and the nature of his kingdom. It is hard to get more basic than that. Can we do any less?

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and convenor of this blog

Back on July 16th the Presiding Bishop and Bonnie Anderson wrote Archbishop Rowan Williams about the General Convention. (An ENS article on this is here). This, however, in a flurry of confusion inside the Episcopal Church’s leadership as to exactly what had occurred, even though such confusion was not shared by the majority of the mainstream media and the Episcopal Church activists for the new theology of human sexuality, was not enough.

Can anyone name a time previously in Episcopal Church history when this has occurred? It not only looks desperate but it speaks poorly to the level of clarity in what is being done. If you need to explain your explanations, if you need to use words and then more words to explain your words, the issue of what you are actually doing and why comes even more strongly to the fore. Let your yes be yes and your no be no as a standard is being missed, and for a Christian community that is a very sad thing indeed–KSH.

[i] Note from the elves: this was written and published on July 15th, when TitusOneNine was having technical difficulties. It was posted to the backup blog and also at Stand Firm, and released to various other news outlets. Since not all TitusOneNine readers will have seen it, we are reposting it today, as well as posting it in proper chronological order with all the other entries for July 15th that we are importing from the backup blog.[/i]

Statement of Kendall Harmon on Resolution D025

The passage of Resolution D025 by the General Convention of 2009 is a repudiation of Holy Scripture as the church has received and understood it ecumenically in the East and West. It is also a clear rejection of the mutual responsibility and interdependence to which we are called as Anglicans. That it is also a snub to the Archbishop of Canterbury this week while General Synod is occurring in York only adds insult to injury.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the BBC, the New York Times and Integrity all see what is being done here. There are now some participants in the 76th General Convention who are trying to pretend that a yes to D025 is NOT a no to B033. Jesus’ statement about letting your yes be yes and your no be no is apt here. These types of attempted obfuscations are utterly unconvincing. The Bishop of Arizona rightly noted in his blog that D025 was “a defacto repudiation of” B033.

The presuppositions of Resolution D025 are revealing. For a whole series of recent General Conventions resolutions have been passed which are thought to be descriptive by some, but understood to be prescriptive by others. The 2007 Primates Communique spoke to this tendency when they stated “they deeply regret a lack of clarity”on the part of the 75th General Convention.

What is particularly noteworthy, however, is that Episcopal Church Resolutions and claimed stances said to be descriptive at one time are more and more interpreted to be prescriptive thereafter. Now, in Resolution D025, the descriptive and the prescriptive have merged. You could hear this clearly in the floor debates in the two Houses where speakers insisted “This is who we are!”

Those involved in pastoral care know that when a relationship is deeply frayed when one or other party insists “this is who I am” the outcome will be disastrous. The same will be the case with D025, both inside the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

D025 is the proud assertion of a church of self-authentication and radical autonomy.

It is a particularly ugly sight.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina

Just watch and listen at General Convention, especially to the leadership. Where does the problem lie? Almost always elsewhere. Other people or Provinces in the Anglican Communion, the reasserters in the Episcopal Church, and on and on it goes. Say what you want about Katharine Jefferts Schori’s opening sermon (and I found many of the critiques wide of the mark), but the locus of blame was elsewhere.

Now these are only examples, and many more can be given. But do listen closely to the absence of TEC’s self-criticism at General Convention 2009. The silence is deafening–KSH.

Update: The media briefing from today, July 13, had Bishop Michael Smith of North Dakota, Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington, Sally Johnson of Minnesota, Ernie Bennett of Central Florida, and Emily Morales of Puerto Rico. It is in this briefing in that you can hear Bishop Saul’s comments. Go to this website then find the “On Demand” section and thereafter look for the “July 13, 2009 Media Brief” picture and click on it.

Having had a night to ponder and pray on it, this is my read of the attempt of D025. I think the reference in the floor debate to the “craft” of the resolution by the committee was revealing.

Whatever happened to principled theological liberalism [and blog readers know I do not like nor do I use this term]? If the House of Deputies leadership believes B033 should be repealed (and everyone knows that is the case), they should have the courage to repeal it.

They should also have the honesty to say what they are doing in unmistakably clear terms. The more frayed relationships get, and the more trust is in tatters, the more careful attention to precise communication matters.