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The Diocese of South Carolina is considering affiliating with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

The Diocese’s Affiliation Task Force recommended the association during the 225th annual Diocesan Convention in Bluffton this weekend. Affiliation would require the Diocese to approve affiliation in two future conventions. More than 350 clergy and delegates representing 53 churches across the southern and coastal part of the state gathered for the convention.

Before affiliation the Task Force will host meetings throughout the Diocese to brief clergy and church members about the benefits of affiliation and ask questions about the possible move.

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Pat Conroy was laid to rest Tuesday under the bright Lowcountry sun, which is exactly where he always wanted to be.

Although he was not South Carolina-born ”” he entered this world in Atlanta ”” the famous author chose the Lowcountry, chose Beaufort, as his home. He loved this state as much as any native, and he shared that love with the world.

And we loved him back.

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The Diocese of South Carolina will hold its 225th Diocesan convention at the Church of the Cross in Bluffton, March 11-12, 2016. More than 350 convention delegates and clergy members representing 23,000 baptized members from across the eastern and coastal part of the state will attend the annual gathering to be held at the historic church.

A mini-conference on Grandparenting kicks off the convention the morning of the 11th followed by a series of afternoon workshops aimed at strengthening and growing churches. All are open to the public.

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The Devil’s Washbowl, Middle Fork Canyon
..The trail down the Middle Fork Canyon was breathtaking. Everywhere offering grand views both down the canyon as well as up toward the Sierra crest. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Each mile brought spectacular cliffs 4,000, to 5,000 thousand foot canyon walls and the river festooned with waterfalls, deep pools, raging rapids. But each impressive water fall or rapids made the words of warning echo in my ears””“Be careful fording the Middle Fork of the Kings!”

Just a mile or so past Devil’s Washbowl things took an ironic turn. As I rounded the talus rock of a side canyon there was a stench of smoke. I thought at first it was a simple campfire””but wondered who might be in the canyon and why they’d have a campfire on a rather warm afternoon. Too soon it was obvious this was no campfire but a forest fire.

The entire canyon was filling with smoke””above me, behind me, in front of me, down trail below me. My first thought was””“Where is the fire?” and the second””“What should I do?”

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We are committed to providing leadership that honors Jesus Christ as the head of the Church, the authority of his Word and the power of his gospel. Therefore, in the power of the Holy Spirit ””

1. We covenant ourselves to pray for each other and to establish a network that will allow us to continue in communion to support each other.

2. We covenant ourselves to give greater priority to lead as Anglicans in the way Jesus did it: servant leadership.

3. We covenant ourselves to transform our societies through the Anglican institutions and churches in which we serve.

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Amen.

Read it all [pdf] and the Report from A.L.I. Director Peter Moore

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When the women in the movie “Only God Can” talk with each other, they say things like “Let me tell you, one Charleston Heart to another,” then go on to say whatever they wanted to share.

This is a faith-based movie about five women in their 40s who have been friends since their days at the College of Charleston. They call themselves the “Holy City Heartbreakers” and the film begins with them all coming together for a reunion at a splendid beach house not far from Charleston.

That these women love and care for each other is readily apparent, yet, as adults, they have taken different paths toward completeness, with varying results. Two are committed Christians, the other three, not so much. This leads to conflict among them that is put into perspective when tragedy strikes.

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Just before the South Carolina primary last week, there was a report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on religion in the state. I couldn’t believe what was reported. It took some digging to find the source of the problem: it is very difficult to find valid surveys of states, and it’s even harder to find ones that can be compared over time.

Here’s what PRRI reported. Since Pew surveyed in 2007, the percentage of white born-again Christians dropped from 36 to 26 percent. Other white Protestants fell from 24 to 17 percent. This means that white Protestants lost nearly a third of their members in just eight years. White Protestants have gone from being a majority (60 percent) to a minority (43 percent).

If these results were true, then it was big news. Really big. Sure, South Carolina is becoming more diverse, but did white Protestants drop 800,000 in less than a decade? Such a change is incredible (literally).

That was my gut reaction. Figuring out whether my instinct was right took some digging. It took some time, but I found the problem.

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Her boisterous laugh warms the nearly empty sanctuary. She is flanked by three young black journalists who are wrapping up an interview for a TV station that airs out of Columbia, South Carolina.

It’s Dr. Betty Deas Clark’s fourth week as the first female pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, affectionately referred to as “Mother Emanuel.” The pew she grips while chatting with the young men belongs to the same set inhabited by the nine churchgoers massacred last June by 21-year-old Dylann Roof, a white supremacist.

“Hold on,” she tells me before we start the interview. Clark wants to switch up her attire. “I have an African outfit in the car,” she says with a beaming smile as she hastily exits the room.

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Voters headed to the polls Saturday in the Republican primary contest here, the first in the South, as front-runner Donald Trump looked to hold off rivals in a still-crowded GOP field.

The final days of campaigning in state featured allegations and counterclaims of dirty tricks, long a tradition in the state. At the same time, Mr. Trump continued to dominate headlines and flirt with fresh controversy, calling for a boycott of Apple Inc. on Friday over phone encryption, just after he appeared to make peace following a spat with the Vatican and softened his attacks over the runup to the Iraq War.

In South Carolina, Mr. Trump was the top pick of 28% of likely Republican primary voters, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll held in the final days before Saturday’s election.

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“In certain circles, race in the church just isn’t talked about,” said Philip Pinckney, a pastoral intern at Sovereign Grace Church of the Lowcountry and organizer of 1Charleston. He said that after seeing beautiful symbolic gestures of racial unity in Charleston following the Emanuel AME shooting, his church wanted to keep working on substantive changes.

Loritts, a pastor at New York’s Trinity Grace Church and president of the Kainos Movement for multi-ethnic churches, brought some hard words to a local church body that in many cases remains segregated by default. He noted the irony of walking through CSU’s Strom Thurmond Center, named after a prominent segregationist, en route to talk about racial unity, and he called into question the salvation of Christians who “were sexually chaste yet hated people who did not look like them.”

“We are not giving you license to subscribe to a colorblind ethic. God made me black. God made you white,” Loritts said, addressing a diverse crowd of about 200 attendees that skewed mostly white. “I am a Christian before I am black, and yet being Christian does not mean that I abandon my blackness.”

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The famous radio personality and early pioneer of television, Arthur Godfrey, grew up in an era very different from today. It was a time when a boy could wander down to the blacksmith shop on a lazy afternoon and watch the smithy work at his anvil and forge. It was a favorite past time of the young Godfrey. Sometimes he would watch the blacksmith sorting the scrap metal. The man would pick up a piece of metal from a holding bin, turn it this way and that in his large hands, then either toss it into the fire to be softened and hammered into some useful tool, or thrown into a junk heap to be discarded. From this experience Arthur forged a simple prayer which he used all his life. Whenever seized by his own sense of sin or some personal moral failure he would pray “The fire, Lord, not the junk-heap.” It is a prayer that captures two essential dimensions of Ash Wednesday and Lent”” a prayer for pardon and a prayer for purity.

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Furman University political scientist Danielle Vinson sees two different races: “Those fighting for Trump and Cruz who say, ”˜We want an outsider,’ versus everyone else who wants a practical candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton and won’t embarrass you along the way.”

…the story in New Hampshire was how Rubio’s opponents, especially those in the establishment, hit the one-term U.S. senator repeatedly over his lack of experience.

“I don’t think South Carolina will decide anything for Republicans,” Vinson said. “It’s more of a race whether it salvages Rubio or makes those concerns linger longer.”

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You can listen directly here or download the mp3 there.

You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

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In summary, said Dr. Anis, Christians who witness to Muslims must depend entirely on the Holy Spirit, and should be authentic, humble and generous in all their dealings. Muslims who convert frequently must pay a heavy price in loss of family relationships and everything they had held dear; the Christian community must be prepared to do all that it can to mitigate those losses. He closed his talk with a short film that showed the various kinds of Christian outreach his own diocese is sponsoring, with an emphasis on providing the best possible loving care to Egyptians from all walks of life in Christian-run hospitals, and offering testimonies from those whose lives had changed in consequence. God’s love, shown to Muslims and others through freely given medical and other care, brings results on God’s timetable. “Our job is to witness to Christ’s love, to pay the price when asked, and to involve the local community of believers.”

Another perspective on witnessing to Muslims was offered by Fouad Masri, a Lebanese-born, third-generation pastor who trained in the United States, and then in 1993 founded the Crescent Project, based in Indianapolis, through which he has taught more than 21,000 Christians how to share their faith sensitively and caringly with Muslims. He stressed that Muslims generally do not know what Christians believe, that they never read the Bible for themselves, and have repeatedly been told that it is unreliable (its text is, e.g., hopelessly corrupt in comparison with the Qu’ran that was dictated directly from Allah).

“Because you have been at this conference,” he predicted, “God will put a Muslim in your path. Be an ambassador for your faith: represent it truly, humbly, and without apology or evasion. Be friendly — don’t criticize Muslim beliefs; build bridges, biblical bridges, from your faith to theirs, with which you can reach them. Invite them to your home, and share what you have. Remember that God, not us, makes people Christians; we are God’s humble servants, and our involvement is His involvement with the world.”

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The theme of this year’s Mere Anglicanism Conference in Charleston, South Carolina was “The Cross and the Crescent: the Gospel and the Challenge of Islam.” Over the course of four sessions, seven speakers gave the sold-out audience a comprehensive view of Islamic ideology and history, along with the understanding and tools which Christians need in their personal dealings with Muslims.

The Conference was carefully balanced. Two of the speakers analyzed the tenets of Islam and their contrasts with those of Christianity; two of the speakers spoke to the historical and present-day conflicts between Islamic countries and Western ones; two offered insights and approaches to discussing religion with followers of Mohammed, garnered from their years of experience in dealing with Muslims from all walks of life; and the seventh speaker offered a moving personal testimony to his own conversion from Islam to Christianity — a decision which cost him his closest ties to his own family. In order to keep my report easier to follow, I shall divide it into two parts. I will first discuss those speakers who gave analytical and historical critiques of Islam, and then cover those who offered pragmatic advice in the second part.

Dr. William Lane Craig, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology (La Mirada, California), and also a Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptists University, opened the Conference on Thursday evening with a talk on “The Concept of God in Islam and Christianity.” He explained that he had been interacting with Islam, both academically and in debates with leading Muslim advocates, for over thirty years. In that time, he learned how to address the issue of the God that each religion worships. We should not ask: “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?”, because that approach gets tied up in differences over terminology and semantics. A more useful inquiry is: “What is the concept of ‘God’ in Islam, and in Christianity? Are they the same? And if not, which one is true?”

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Less than 24 hours after burying her grandson who was shot to death last week in North Charleston, Carolyn Simmons took a stand against gun violence at a downtown church.

“I want to stop all this,” she said with desperation in her voice. Her grandson, Lamonte Simmons, 19, died Jan. 23, and two teenagers were subsequently charged with murder. “Too many kids are getting killed for no reason.”

Simmons attended the Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church on Bull Street, where one of her relatives, the Rev. Anthony Thompson, asked the congregation to sign petitions in support of gun control that will be sent to state lawmakers.

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There is no precise diagnosis. There is no cure. There is no way to scientifically prove that a disorder allegedly affecting more than 6 million Americans even exists.

Joseph Helpern and his colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina have made significant progress studying attention deficit hyperactivity disorder through innovations in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Still, he’ll be the first to tell you that there’s so much they don’t know about ADHD.

He hopes that will change. Helpern believes MRI testing will one day be the tool for doctors to diagnose ADHD.

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How Emanuel AME Church reacted to the 90 seconds of terror that unfolded within its walls last year has some people mentioning the Charleston congregation in the same breath as the pope and others who have sought world peace.

The church on Monday joined Pope Francis as a nominee for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, an honor that typically picks from hundreds of disparate political, religious and cultural pioneers who have helped civilizations in all corners of the globe cope with strife.

Inspired by the response to the mass shooting that befell the church and claimed nine parishioners’ lives on June 17, a group of Chicago-area political leaders led the Nobel effort and others, including U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., joined in. Though they announced the push months ago, the officials said they had followed through with the nomination by Monday’s deadline.

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I write this article after having completed the first week of the Institute. If possible, it has already exceeded my expectations. Several things have especially stood out to me this first week.

First, the Beauty of Christ’s Global Body. Upon meeting my fellow participants the first day, I was surprised to discover that we had many mutual friends from places like India, South Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, etc. This was especially surprising in light of the fact that as a young priest I haven’t lived very long, haven’t traveled very far, and haven’t had a whole lot of life experience. In short, this instant connectedness was not about me but was simply a beautiful testament to how Christ’s body has grown””from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth””and to how the spiritual unity we have in Christ is being made visible by advances in modern technology.
Stemming from this unity, the fellowship has been both rich and challenging. With regards to the richness, one cannot hear eyewitness stories of martyrdom and persecution without being touched in the deep places of one’s soul and inspired to follow Christ more faithfully in one’s own walk (Heb. 11). Many of the participants have tread the path of persecution, and as a Westerner, their stories put my own ministry challenges in healthy and humbling perspective.

On the other hand, the diversity of the fellowship has challenged us to wrestle honestly with the unique cultural lenses we bring to ministry. Whether we’re asking questions after a lecture, breaking down a passage of scripture in a small-group preaching exercise, or analyzing a case study from mission field, it has been eye-opening to see just how pervasively our cultures influence our perspectives. Fortunately, as we wrestle honestly with these issues, our blinders begin to fall away, and we are able to more clearly see the pure and undiluted Gospel, in all of its glory.

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The killer was at large when Anthony Thompson bolted back toward the white church, its spire rising high and proud in the darkness, its body surrounded by emergency vehicles. He darted for the church’s gate and a side door, the one a white man had entered before allegedly gunning down nine people at Myra’s Bible study.

Someone grabbed him.
“Where you going?” It was an FBI agent.

“I’m Reverend Thompson. My wife’s in that church. I need to go on in and get her.”

“No, no, son. You can’t go in there.”

“Oh yes I can. I’m going in there too. Now let me go!”

Instead, the agent pulled Thompson aside, speaking gently, “You don’t want to go in there.”

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Finding a good root doctor these days in Beaufort County is as hard as finding Dr. Buzzard’s grave.

This once-isolated land of hexes and haints now leans more on Walmart than voodoo.

But it hasn’t always been so.

In the mid-20th century, even the county sheriff was a witch doctor. J. Ed McTeer Sr. specialized in removing spells cast by Dr. Buzzard, Dr. Eagle, Dr. Bug and perhaps as many as 20 other local root doctors.

Read more here: http://www.islandpacket.com/news/nation-world/national/article56610278.html#storylink=cpy

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One of the greatest challenges for Christians at the dawn of the 21st century is the power and influence of Islam. As the world’s two great missionary religions, Christianity and Islam are often at odds with one another, and the tension can at times feel palpable. How are we as Christians to respond to the threat and challenge of this growing and energetic religion? What should be the Church’s reaction in light of the Lord’s Great Commission to make disciples of all men? What does the Apostle Paul mean when he reminds believers that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds”? Join us this year at Mere Anglicanism as we explore “The Cross and the Crescent: The Gospel and the Challenge of Islam.”

You may find the schedule here and a list of speakers there.

You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

The Rev. Dr. Betty Deas Clark has been named pastor of Emanuel AME Church, where nine black worshipers were gunned down on June 17 by an avowed white racist. She will be the church’s first female pastor.

Since the shooting, the church had been led by interim pastor Rev. Dr. Norvel Goff, amid controversy. Goff is running for bishop, The Post and Courier has confirmed. He now also serves as the region’s presiding elder.

Clark was appointed Saturday by current Bishop Richard Norris, who will retire this summer from his post overseeing the district that spans South Carolina.

The Awendaw native will preach her first sermon at the church affectionately called Mother Emanuel at 9:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

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