January 4, 2013

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

By now you are aware that today the Diocese of South Carolina, the Trustees of the Diocese and congregations representing the vast majority of its baptized members filed suit in South Carolina Circuit Court against The Episcopal Church to protect the Diocese’s real and personal property and that of its parishes.

We have developed a number of background resources you may find helpful in explaining this situation to your parish. These items include:

A letter from Bishop Lawrence – in the form of a bulletin insert
Stewardship of the Gospel – Stewardship of the Diocese (a theological reflection)
A Media Release
List of Plaintiffs Participating
Glossary of Terms
Timeline of Events
Letters of Support/Articles of Interest

These may all be found here.

If you have additional questions, please feel free to contact me.

In Christ’s service,

–(The Rev. Canon) Jim Lewis is Canon to the Ordinary of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina

Read it all.

This post is ‘Sticky’ at the head of the page – new posts are below.
I write to you in this Christmas season to share some news. Today, parishes representing approximately 75 percent of baptized members in our Diocese joined in filing for a declarative judgment in a South Carolina Circuit Court against the Episcopal Church (TEC). We are asking the court to declare that The Episcopal Church (TEC) has no right to the Diocese’s identity and property or that of its parishes.

We are saddened that we feel it necessary to ask a court to protect our property rights, but recent actions compelled us to take this action. As you know, The Episcopal Church (TEC) has begun the effort to claim the Diocese of South Carolina’s identity by calling for a convention to identify new leadership for the diocese, creating a website using the Diocesan seal and producing material that invokes the name and identity of the Diocese of South Carolina.

Our suit asks the court to prevent TEC from infringing on the protected marks of the Diocese, including its seal and its historical names, and to prevent it from assuming the Diocese’s identity, which was established long before TEC was formed. It also asks the court to protect our parish and Diocesan property, including church buildings and rectories, which our forefathers built and even shed blood over, and you have maintained without any investment of any kind from the national church.

Read it all.

This post is ‘Sticky’ at the head of the page – new posts are below.

See also: Bishop Mark Lawrence Writes Regarding the Declaratory Judgment and A Message to Clergy in the Diocese of South Carolina Regarding the Declaratory Judgment and The Diocese of South Carolina is the Only Authority to Convene a Convention in the Diocese and South Carolina Links

The Diocese of South Carolina, the Trustees of the Diocese and congregations representing the vast majority of its baptized members today filed suit in South Carolina Circuit Court against The Episcopal Church to protect the Diocese’s real and personal property and that of its parishes.

The suit also asks the court to prevent The Episcopal Church from infringing on the protected marks of the Diocese, including its seal and its historical names, and to prevent the church from assuming the Diocese’s identity, which was established long before The Episcopal Church’s creation.

“We seek to protect more than $500 million in real property, including churches, rectories and other buildings that South Carolinians built, paid for, maintained and expanded ”“ and in some cases died to protect ”“ without any support from The Episcopal Church,” said the Rev. Jim Lewis, Canon to the Ordinary. “Many of our parishes are among the oldest operating churches in the nation. They and this Diocese predate the establishment of The Episcopal Church. We want to protect these properties from a blatant land grab.”

Read it all.

Now think with me about how, on that first Christmas Eve, Jesus beganhis life journey”¦as an outsider.

􀀁 Jesus was an outsider politically. He had to flee from Herod. Within a year of his birth, he was a refugee in Egypt.

ô€€ Jesus was an outsider to his own family. Despite his mother’s devotion, his brothers and sisters never seemed to have understood him. At times during his ministry they even thought he had gone mad.

ô€€ Jesus was an outsider to his townsfolk. The people of Nazareth accepted him ”“ yes, when he was the carpenter’s son. But when his ministry began, they all but threw him off the cliff for his “pretentious” messianic airs.

􀀁 Jesus was an outsider to the religious leaders. He had no formal theological training, nor did he have a proper school of educated disciples. His band of followers was riff raff from the boondocks up in Galilee.

􀀁 And Jesus was an outsider to the Romans. They saw him as a menace to the peace they had brokered with the Sanhedrin. For all they knew Jesus was a zealot, secretly plotting a revolt against them.

Read it all.

The backup quarterback throws a touchdown pass with 11 seconds left on the clock. My goodness what a win for the Gamecocks–and it was a super game.

Chandler Catanzaro kicked a 37-yard field goal as time expired to give No. 14 Clemson a wild 25-24 win against No. 9 Louisiana State in the Chick-fil-A Bowl on Monday night.

Trailing 24-22, Clemson (11-2) took possession on its 20 with 1:39 remaining. Tajh Boyd completed a pass for 26 yards to DeAndre Hopkins on a fourth-and-16 play during the decisive 10-play drive.

Catanzaro’s kick set off a wild celebration on the field and in the stands. Some players collapsed on the field in apparent disbelief while most of Clemson’s orange jerseys met in a midfield circle.

Read it all. I was unable to stay up for the end; congratulations to the Tigers–KSH.

Do consider coming–the schedule is there.

A year ago, Lloyd Hale drove past the four-story building once called the S.C. Lunatic Asylum, now a hulking souvenir to a bygone day when thousands of the state’s most severely mentally ill were locked up on this campus in Columbia.

He passed a string of ghostly vacant buildings and slowed. He stopped at the final building, the one in whose wards he spent 18 months of his young life, the months when the real Lloyd Hale surfaced from delusions that had claimed his reality, his family, his freedom ”” and another man’s life.
Hale parked his state-issued work vehicle at the building.

In the silence and privacy of his car, he cried, sobbing for his younger self, the one so nearly lost to the delusional grip of schizophrenia. And he cried for the real Lloyd Hale, the one who was rescued, the one who now helps others tangled in mental illness.

Read it all.

People put information on Facebook, news outlets did stories on our loss, and we sent emails to our friends.

The outpouring of support was immediate and generous. A contractor who got a tweet from his pastor at Seacoast Church had his own tools stolen several months ago, so he knew how it felt to lose such needed items. He purchased for us some brand new tools and also some used tools, spending over $700 of his own money.

Members of the Charleston Trident Home Builders Association and the Custom Residential Architects Network donated more than $4,000 in a matter of days. One of our board members offered to match donations by other members up to $2,500.

Read it all.

I especially loved the picture on the front “Nativity” by Walter Lynn Mosley. Check it out.

A device made of materials like those used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing could have been a former student’s “dry run” to see how authorities would respond to a bomb threat at Trident Technical College, Sheriff Al Cannon said Friday.

Local investigators and federal terrorism experts wouldn’t say whether the device could have exploded and caused damage near the North Charleston campus’ Student Center, which was mostly abandoned Monday for the holiday break.

The device contained ammonium nitrate, the same, readily available fertilizer that Timothy McVeigh used in his attack on the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 people.

Read it all.

“What the Presiding Bishop is trying to do is to organize a new diocese of the Episcopal Church in this area,” …[ Bishop Mark Lawrence] said. “We in the Diocese of South Carolina have nothing to do with that undertaking. The name “The [Episcopal] Diocese of South Carolina” is the registered property and identity of the Diocese.”

Bishop Lawrence explained that the continued use of the Dioceses’ corporate name and identity by TEC is causing confusion among the members of the Diocese and the wider South Carolina public. “This misuse of our name and identity by TEC is a violation of South Carolina law and can subject it to liability for treble damages and attorneys’ fees, he explained. “I call upon TEC to cease and desist from the continued misuse of our name and identity.“

Read it all.

The decision by the Diocese of South Carolina to leave the The Episcopal Church (TEC) and St. Paul’s Summerville’s leadership’s decision to remain with the Diocese has and will impact all of us but some more than others. Many of the St. Paul’s family are at peace with the decision to leave TEC, but others are hurt, disappointed or angry. For the latter, questions have arisen about their relationship to their St. Paul’s family. Will I be welcomed at St. Paul’s as an Episcopalian who does not want to remain with the Diocese of South Carolina? Can I still worship at St. Paul’s? Can I serve on teams and committees of St. Paul’s? Can I remain part of my St. Paul’s family and be a member of TEC, not the Diocese of South Carolina?
The answer to these four questions is yes, yes, yes and yes … absolutely! St. Paul’s Summerville is a member church of the Diocese. Thus, we no longer belong to TEC, but an individual may transfer their membership to an Episcopal Church while worshipping and exercising a ministry from St. Paul’s as long as the rector of an Episcopal Church agrees to accept the Letter of Transfer. Or, one may leave one’s membership here at St. Paul’s, the letter of the law; but acknowledge to others, in the spirit of the law, you are an Episcopalian.

Since 1707, first on the banks of the Stono River, then at Ravenel and finally settling permanently here in Summerville in 1823, St. Paul’s has been home for generations of families while welcoming guests and strangers and inviting them to also make this their spiritual home. Institutionally, we were first, Church of England; then, The Episcopal Church; and now we are an extra-provincial Diocese* of the world-wide Anglican Communion. Through the 300 years of our existence these have been our institutional markers; secondary, though, to our foremost identity. And what is our foremost identity? We are first and foremost simply members of the One Body of Christ, and our spiritual home is this local community called St. Paul’s Summerville.

Therefore, if St. Paul’s is your home, then may it continue to be your home! I am blessed and delighted that you will worship with us and minister alongside of us, all in the name of Jesus, regardless of one’s institutional identification. And, if the Lord has called you out of St. Paul’s to a new spiritual home at this juncture, then may the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

In Christ’s love,

–(The Rev.) Mike Lumpkin is rector, St. Paul’s Summerville, S.C.

There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope
when you were called – one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:4-6

* Extra-provincial means an autonomous diocese without an affiliation to an Anglican province. This will be a temporary status for the Diocese of South Carolina.

Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina on Monday selected Representative Tim Scott to replace Jim DeMint in the United States Senate, an appointment that will make Mr. Scott the first black senator from the South since the late 19th century.

“It is a historic day in South Carolina,” Ms. Haley said, announcing her decision at the Capitol in Columbia with Mr. Scott at her side. She added, “He earned this seat for what I know he is going to do to make South Carolina and our country proud.”

The governor said that she chose Mr. Scott for his business vision and commitment to conservative principles. She said that he “will fly through 2014,” when he faces election to the Senate seat.

Read it all.

Canonical legerdemain and unlawful usurpation of authority by the presiding bishop in the aim of a political agenda were a sad commentary on the moral state of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Lawrence observed.

The presiding bishop would go to any lengths to exterminate dissent and would twist words to achieve her purposes. “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” to the South Carolina special convention, he said.

But Bishop Lawrence reported that he was “heartened” by the support he had received by the “vast majority” within the diocese and from the “majority of Anglicans around the world” who have “expressed in so many ways that they consider me an Anglican Bishop in good standing and consider this Diocese of South Carolina to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. “

Read it all.

Read it all.

Home House Press is one of at least a dozen book publishers operating in South Carolina. Half of those companies are based in the Charleston area. They produce traditional books ”” printed on paper, bound and shipped to stores and customers. They do this in a digital age when printed materials such as newspapers, magazines and books face increasing competition from other media platforms.

They are succeeding, more or less, even as larger publishers ”” typically divisions of multinational media conglomerates ”” are struggling to cope with growing demand for Web-based products and electronic books. They are flourishing even though powerful retailers and distributors like Amazon and Ingram demand discounts and high fees.

What’s the secret? Specialization, South Carolina publishers said. And a strong emphasis on local topics and people. Oh, and coffee table books.

Read it all.

One of nature’s tiniest creatures has brought havoc to one of Charleston’s oldest churches.

Termites have attacked the wood and skeletal support system at Citadel Square Baptist Church, the yellow stucco landmark adjacent to Marion Square.

The damage is so severe that the sanctuary has been closed for the last two years, forcing the tiny congregation to meet in an adjoining 1950s-era chapel.

Read it all.

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.

Volunteers from the Church of the Holy Cross barely had time to warm their feet after a relief trip to New Jersey last week before others from the church headed north to deliver 300 appliances to Hurricane Sandy victims.

What started with a simple desire to help blossomed into a huge response of giving.

“I feel like I’m holding on to a freight train,” said Chris Donavan, a church member who experienced Hurricane Hugo with three small children and wanted to assist Sandy’s victims. She put out a call for donations and was overwhelmed with response.

Read it all.

Read it all and there is more here.

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.”

Read it all.

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).

Watch it all carefully.

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, the Greenville archconservative, said today that he will resign from the Senate in January to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Gov. Nikki Haley will name DeMint’s successor who will serve until 2014, when a special election would be held to fill the final two years of Republican DeMint’s six-year term, the same time U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is up for re-election.

Immediate speculation turned to U.S. Rep. Tim Scott, R-North Charleston, who, like DeMint, is a Tea Party favorite. Scott also is the only Republican African-American in the U.S. House.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Our scriptures call us to righteousness, fullness of faith, to love for one another and just behavior toward the poor, the needy and the oppressed. They call us to watch for signs of the kingdom of God, keeping our hearts free from the weight of “dissipation, and drunkenness and the worries of this life” so that we will be alert and ready to stand before the Son of Man.

So we yearn for our lives to reflect the image of God implanted within us. And we strive to put on this “armor of light.”

This Advent finds South Carolina Episcopalians with an open wound, our armor pierced by our inability across diocesan boundaries to navigate the challenge of living and staying together in disagreement. The disassociation of the Diocese of South Carolina from The Episcopal Church has formalized a long-developing schism over matters of both theology and governance.

The questions about whether they can legally do what they have done are not ours to answer. The questions of who is the more to blame are not ours to answer. As I said earlier, temptations to choose those things which may do us or others harm are ever with us and these temptations have been freely engaged across the church from both sides in this tragic fracture. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that not a single one of us is ever free from these temptations and guilt for succumbing to them.

Read it all.

The Episcopal Church has been making headlines lately, but unfortunately, not in a positive way. In case you’re caught up in all the headlines, the Reverend Father David Thurlow of St. Matthias Episcopal Church wants to set the record straight.

“What we want people to know about the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, the Diocese of S.C., is that it’s still faithful to the faith once delivered to the saints,” Thurlow said. “In recent years, of course, there’s been this trend in the culture and society to walk apart from that faith or to distance one’s self from that faith, and as that’s been true in the culture, it’s been true in many of the Episcopal Diocese throughout the country, here in the Untied States.”

Read it all.