Rick Brewer moved to town as a teen in 1969. His dad was a pastor, and they’d go watch sports events at what was Baptist College at Charleston.
Back then, the North Charleston campus was a 400-acre stretch with a few buildings, gravel roads and not much else. In the middle of nowhere.
“It’s a lot prettier now,” Brewer says, grinning.
The school was born 50 years ago this year after a group of Christian men saw a need for a Christian college south of the Baptist-heavy Upstate.
Clemson University scientists have spent the past four months scraping away a heavy layer of encrusted sand, sediment and shell from the hull of the Civil War submarine that built up over the 136 years it lay hidden beneath the Atlantic floor.
Now, for the first time in more than 150 years, the Hunley’s bare skin is visible. And its iron hull doesn’t look that much older than, say, the Cold War-era sub Clamagore.
In fact, the results of the Hunley’s deconcretion so far are picture-perfect, which means the sub looks exactly as artist Conrad Wise Chapman depicted it in an 1863 painting.
Alister McGrath speaking on "How C.S. Lewis helps us respond to secularism." #mereanglicanism pic.twitter.com/pbI7b5ecYG
— Bishop Steve Wood (@revstevewood) January 24, 2015
Check them all out courtesy of Joy Hunter.
Tom Wrights' talk entitled 'How scripture outflanks secularism: The biblical challenge to the church in the world' #mereanglicanism
— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 22, 2015
”˜Fixing our … roads … tremendously important’
“Education reform and infrastructure repairs are two of the most challenging economic issues we face. … Fixing our crumbling roads system is also tremendously important as it directly impacts economic development, which leads to job creation and higher wages.”
”” House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington
”˜Drop in the bucket’ “It’s just a drop in the bucket to solving the problem. … There’s many ways to do it, but this is just not going to deal with the real magnitude of the problem that we have.”
”” Senate Minority Leader Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington
It is rare that you are able to be in the presence of a true American hero, but that is exactly what we have with us today in Kyle Carpenter.
Please stand and join me in showing our deepest gratitude for his service to our country and his bravery that has made us all so proud.
South Carolina continues to be a major success story when it comes to recruiting jobs to our state. We make it very clear to the companies that choose to invest here that they are joining our South Carolina family. The businesses we are honoring tonight could have invested and moved anywhere in the country, and they chose to join Team South Carolina. We should never take that for granted.
Tonight, representatives of a few of those success stories, from all across the world, are here with us. As I introduce them, please hold your applause until the end ”“ and then join me in giving them a warm South Carolina welcome.
You can find the speakers brief bios here and the conference schedule there and the vision for the gathering here. You all know enough about a conference like this to know that there is much more to it than simply the presentations. Please pray for the speakers travel and ministry here (a number are serving in Sunday worship after the conference locally), the time to develop new friendships and renew old ones, for the Bishop and his wife Allison in their hosting capacity, and especially for the the Rev. Jeffrey Miller of Beaufort and his assisting staff, who has the huge responsibility of coordinating it all–KSH.
Speakers at the biggest civil rights rally of the year in South Carolina warned the crowd against accepting things the way that they are.
A few thousand people came to the Statehouse on Monday for the South Carolina NAACP’s King Day at the Dome rally.
In October, Seacoast’s Mount Pleasant Campus pastor took the stage to tell its 14,000 weekend attendees that he felt God calling the church to alleviate, even end, the local foster care crisis.
A few weeks later, 550 church members showed up for two interest meetings to learn more. An orientation meeting drew nearly 100 serious about becoming foster parents, almost as many people as licensed foster homes existing in Charleston County today.
Next week, the first series of foster parents licensing classes is full with 20 couples.
The San Francisco online ride-sharing company that is causing a storm among S.C. taxi companies and regulators is finding bipartisan legislative support of its efforts to keep operating legally in the Palmetto State.
The state Public Service Commission ordered Uber to stop picking up riders Thursday while regulators weigh the company’s request for a state taxi license.
But Uber drivers were defying the order with cars available Friday in the four S.C. cities where the company operates ”“ Columbia, Charleston, Greenville and Myrtle Beach.
“We will challenge the order and remain committed to providing South Carolinians with greater opportunity and choice,” Uber spokesman Taylor Bennett said.
Crumbling roads like the ones Gould encounters are found statewide, as well as many congested thoroughfares, according to a report released Thursday from The Road Information Program, or TRIP, a national nonprofit organization. Those conditions make the roads unsafe and cost state drivers $3 billion each year in lost time and additional operating, fuel and crash-related costs. The report said nearly half the state’s roads are in poor condition.
In the Charleston area, the report found poor road conditions cost motorists, on average, $1,168 per year: $294 in additional vehicle operating costs, $647 for fuel and lost time on congested roads and $227 in crash-related costs.
Gould said he has lost a lot of time commuting on congested roads, especially during rush hours. He avoids driving on Maybank Highway because of traffic snarls there, especially at the intersection with River Road.
When Heather Remy tells friends she’s heading to church, they know she means the beach. It’s where she thinks, meditates and feels connected to something larger than herself.
But she doesn’t call that God or Christianity.
Despite growing up Catholic, she no longer believes in Jesus and hasn’t warmed a pew in years. Instead, she believes in a spiritual energy, something that binds living things, but not in a divine creator pulling the puppet strings of humankind.
“I think everything falls into place so nicely that I don’t believe it is all coincidence,” she said. “I try to keep my mind open as much as possible.”
Bishop Mark Lawrence is our special guest–read it all.
I write today to let you know that after much prayer and consideration, I am convinced that the time has come for me to retire from my position as Rector of the Church of the Holy Cross. I believe that I have run my portion of the good race and that it is right for me to pass the baton to the next generation.
I am excited and delighted to tell you that Bishop Lawrence met in a private session with your vestry (without my presence) and after prayer and discussion the vestry unanimously chose Chris Warner to become our next rector. I am of the opinion that there is no better person for the position anywhere.
Oregon holds on to its title as “Top Moving Destination” and continues to pull away from the pack, while the Northeast loses residents for the third consecutive year.
Those are the key findings from United Van Lines’ 38th Annual National Movers Study, which tracks customers’ migration patterns state-to-state during the course of the past year. The study found that Oregon is the top moving destination of 2014, with 66 percent of moves to and from the state being inbound ”” that’s a nearly 5 percent increase of inbound moves compared to 2013. Arriving at No. 2 on the list was South Carolina (61 percent inbound), followed closely in third by its northern neighbor, North Carolina (61 percent).
The District of Columbia, which held the top spot on the inbound list from 2008 to 2012 and ranked fourth last year, fell to No. 7 this year with 57 percent inbound moves. New additions to the 2014 top inbound list include Vermont (59 percent), Oklahoma (57 percent) and Idaho (56 percent).
The greater Charleston area saw a surge in homicides last year, with a steady parade of violence from Jan. 1 until Christmas Day, when a 17-year-old was cut down by gunfire on the streets of the Holy City’s East Side neighborhood. In all, 66 people died in homicides in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties – a 40 percent increase from 47 deaths in 2013.
The death toll is even more staggering when placed in context with the region’s murder count for the past 14 years. Since 2001, 709 people have been slain in the greater Charleston area at a rate of about one every seven days, a Post and Courier analysis has found. The review also determined that:
Gun violence fueled much of the bloodshed in 2014, accounting for nearly eight out of every 10 killings. Since 2001, guns have been used in 76 percent of all killings in the three counties.
Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.
The stained glass Nativity that graces the front page of The State’s Christmas Day edition was made by Chapin resident Ruthanne Nicholson.
Her artistic story ”“ and her love of the sacred Bethlehem manger scene ”“ is rooted in the life of her late mother, an Easley resident who was the first of the family’s stained glass artists.
“My story is my mother’s story,” Nicholson said. Her mother, Ruth Gettys, was a member of Easley Presbyterian Church when it burned in 1983, reducing the church to rubble and mounds of broken stained glass.
Listen to it all (and note there is a downloadable option).
Since God was in the business of re-starting creation in the sending of his Son, might we not expect him to create “out of nothing” the second time, just as he did the first? Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the 20th Century, thought so. Just as the Spirit brooded over creation the first time, so again in the birth of Jesus the Spirit “brooded” over the virgin Mary. Also, just as creation was totally initiated by God the first time, so creation (the second time, in Jesus) gets to be totally initiated by God. The Virgin Birth tells us that Jesus was not born “of the will of man”, but wholly of the Father’s initiative. God chose to by-pass the normal male role in the work of redemption, in part, so the logic goes, to signal his own headship. “Man as a creating, controlling, self-assertive, self-glorifying being was set aside in favor of a woman who listened, received, and served.” (From, A Step Further, by the author)
We honor the Virgin Birth, of course, because Scripture teaches it. But we can also see the logic behind it. God’s sovereign action is a challenge to the human psychological need to contribute to our own salvation, to be co-creators with God. Mary is a witness against the drive, push, and self-assertion that men especially (though not exclusively) associate with a healthy self-image and by which men often mask their own impotence.
It was the end of his sixth deployment, with barely a month left, the last mission at hand. And nothing was going right.
The best man in his wedding, a man he’d served with since entering the Marines, was hit by an explosive device, burning the man’s entire body and claiming three of his limbs.
Then, a helicopter crash killed two American servicemen and several Afghan forces.
Last came the ambush.
Read it all and you can find more about Operation Homefront there.
Our guest speaker was His Grace Bishop Youssef, Bishop of the Diocese of the Southern United States of the Coptic Orthodox Church. His sermon focused on learning how to deal with persecution from the examples laid out for us in Holy Scripture. He expounded on how St. Stephen had two options during his martyrdom: look to his persecutors, or lift his eyes to heaven. The saints in the Middle East join
Stephen, with their eyes lifted up to the prize of their calling, Jesus Christ, seated on the right hand of His Father, in heaven. He commented that our service of prayer for our suffering brothers was kindred to the saints praying for Peter when he was thrown into prison….
Within the past year, a series of experiences brought the Rev. Jerome Anderson to his knees.
Not in a posture of defeat, but humble submission to God’s plan.
As a leader in the Christian community, Anderson is accustomed to counseling people during life’s darkest moments, helping them to not just find light at the end of the tunnel, but teaching them how to apply scripture to their situation.
A timeline of the past 18 months of the minister’s life is parallel to the Biblical account of the sufferings of Job in the Old Testament that depicts love, long-suffering and restoration.
Students and professors at Clemson University have designed a home where they say a family of four can live comfortably in the South using local materials and having almost no impact on the environment.
The home is called Indigo Pine, taking its name from two things South Carolina has in abundance: pine trees and the blue dye from the indigo plant.
More than 100 students and professors are helping design and build the home that the university will enter as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon 2015. Sixteen other schools also are participating.
Less than a month after South Carolina began recognizing gay marriages, the state on Friday approved its first same-sex divorce.
Maria Hamar and her now ex-wife, who requested that she not be identified, were married in New York in the fall of 2011, according to court documents that were filed Oct. 31 in Charleston County.
The couple separated two years later, and ultimately dissolved their marriage this week before Family Court Judge Jerry Vinson.
South Carolina has some of the worst drivers in the nation, according to a new report released Thursday.
Does this surprise anyone dodging the traffic on Interstate 26 every day?
South Carolina tied with Montana for the “worst drivers” title, according to Car Insurance Comparison, whose annual “Worst Drivers By State” ranking is based on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
For a second year in a row, South Carolina inched up one spot in the annual America’s Health Rankings.
Small gains are good news, but the Palmetto State still could make significant improvements. Since the rankings were first released in 1990, South Carolina has never scored highly – bouncing between 41st and 48th. This year, it ranks 42nd healthiest among all states (or ninth unhealthiest, depending on your point of view) up from 43rd in 2013 and 44th in 2012.
“When you have ranking systems like this, for us to move up one, (it) means someone else moved back one,” said Lillian Smith, the assistant dean for practice and community engagement at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health. “Does that mean that we improved or someone else got worse? You’ve got to take these things with a grain of salt.”
A Summerville lawmaker will pre-file a bill this week in the state Legislature that would lift restrictions on advanced nurses, despite anticipated push-back from some doctors.
Rep. Jenny Horne, R-Summerville, an attorney, said her bill is an attempt to improve health care access in rural areas.
“We still have a shortage of primary care physicians and this will be in the best interest of the health and welfare of the citizens of South Carolina,” Horne said.
