By now I hope that most are aware that a new TEC steering committee has announced a clergy day that it claims is for the Diocese of South Carolina on Thursday at St. Mark’s, Charleston. So that there is no doubt, this is not a legitimate gathering of the Diocese of South Carolina.

While the steering committee and its associates are certainly free to meet, what they are attempting to perpetrate is identity theft. They are not “the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina,” nor are they “the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina” or “The Diocese of South Carolina.” Those are legal names which belong to us. This group does not have any right to use these names or the Diocesan seal.
For now, I would give you the following advice for your parish:

1. If there is any doubt about the validity of any communication from the Diocese, feel free to contact us to confirm its reliability. The confusion is intentional and for now unavoidable. If you are not sure about the source of anything that presents itself as a diocesan communication, please contact us and ask.

2. As you become aware of fraudulent communications, you can send a return email asking them to discontinue sending fraudulent emails and then mark them as SPAM in your e-mail program for future screening. You can also notify your internet service provider (ISP). They can assist you in blocking future attempts at deceptive communications.

3. Finally, please help us keep your parishioners informed. There is a wealth of information available to you on the Diocesan Website (www.dioceseofsc.org). I would particularly commend several articles today on these recent activities of the steering committee. Their analysis is a valuable tool in helping your members understand these events.

http://anglicanink.com/article/presiding-bishop-backs-ecclesiastical-coup-south-carolina

http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/

http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2012/11/consumed-by-litigation-tec-in-south-carolina/

As we prepare for the next gathering of the Diocese of South Carolina, our Special Diocesan Convention this Saturday (November 17th @ St. Philip’s, Charleston), please feel free to let me know if there is other assistance I can provide you or your parish as we get ready.

In Christ’s service,

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

More than 60 autumns ago, a young Atlantan named Martin Luther King Jr. arrived to start graduate school at Boston University. There, he fell under the influence of a theologian, Howard Thurman, who taught him about Gandhian nonviolence. That concept became one of Dr. King’s guiding principles in the civil rights movement.

On a brilliant fall morning this Sunday, a torch of black Christianity was passed to another minister, scholar and son of Atlanta, who was born five years after Dr. King’s death, the Rev. Jonathan L. Walton. In a combined worship service and installation ceremony, Mr. Walton took on the position of Pusey minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard, a pulpit of importance inside and outside the university.

Mr. Walton’s appointment, which also includes an endowed professorship of Christian morals, forms part of a generational transition in the African-American church. Ministers and theologians who came of age during the civil rights era are being supplanted by those, like Mr. Walton, 39, of elite universities, the diversity movement and hip-hop culture. To underscore how much else has changed at Harvard, Mr. Walton was formally given the pulpit Sunday by Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s first female president.

Read it all.

The FBI probe into the sex scandal that prompted CIA Director David Petraeus to resign has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday.

According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 documents ”” most of them e-mails ”” of “potentially inappropriate” communication between Allen and Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old Tampa woman whose report of harrassment by a person who turned out to be Petraeus’s mistress ultimately led to Petraeus’s downfall.

Read it all.

Why in the world, then, would the “remain Episcopal” group, consisting of some twelve parishes in the Diocese, want to get off on such a wrong foot under South Carolina law? The answer is plain, no matter how much they may try to disavow it, and play the innocent: they are wholly subservient to their captain, and that captain is Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Chief Outlaw of the Episcopal Church (USA).

It is only with her recognition, aid and support that these others could go down such a lawless path of their own. Inspired by her example, they have impersonated the Diocesan office in two emails, misused the corporate seal, and pretended to be who they are not under South Carolina law. This is, of course, all pursuant to, and in order to further yet again, 815’s Grand Strategy for dealing with dissident dioceses, as spelled out by 815 itself and discussed in this earlier post.

As the ACI article carefully explains, the …[Presiding] Bishop’s outlaw strategy in South Carolina is not just invented from day to day; it is self-contradictory, and will result in embarrassment in the courts. On the one hand, 815 is acting as though the Diocese has not left, but has only had all of its positions suddenly become vacant — and it is going about the process of filling them with new people.

But on the other hand, the actions in South Carolina being taken by the Presiding Bishop are canonical only if there is no longer a Diocese there, but only patches of raw territory waiting to be organized as a new diocese. So which is it?

Read it all.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has declared the ecclesiastical authority of the Diocese of South Carolina vacant and has backed a faction within the diocese that is seeking to fill the “vacuum” created by the suspension of Bishop Mark Lawrence.

The loyalist “Transitional Committee” has also declared the South Carolina Standing Committee to be vacant and has formed a “steering committee” to act in its place….

Read it all.

The Steering Committee at the same time sought assistance and guidance from the Presiding Bishop’s Office.

On Thursday, October 25, representatives of the Presiding Bishop met in Charleston with a small group of lay and clergy persons…to outline steps that could be taken by such a Steering Committee. Such a group would, among other things, also be in close communication with the Presiding Bishop during the reorganization effort.

The Presiding Bishop’s Office expects this Steering Committee to announce its formation, its members, and the elements of a reorganization plan in cooperation with the Presiding Bishop within the next several days.

Read it all.

Q: While we’re at it, define the word “diocese.” My understanding is a diocese is, by definition, part of something larger; it’s a geographical designation and regional authority within a church. Is the PECDSC technically a “diocese”?

A: We believe that your understanding of the concept of a diocese is incorrect. The proper definition is that a diocese is a district or churches under the jurisdiction of a bishop. The Diocese of South Carolina, for example, predated the existence of The Episcopal Church. A diocese is a community of parishes, in freely chosen union with its Convention, and led by its bishop. No less an authority than Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has stated that “The organ of union with the wider church is the diocese and its bishop, rather than the provincial structure … rather than the abstract reality of the ”˜national church.’ ” In other words, the organ of union with the wider church is the Diocese, not The Episcopal Church.

Read it all.

This post is sticky, look for new entries below and see also the full South Carolina Links
There were ELEVEN new entries posted November 13 about the diocese of South Carolina. Make sure you start with Kendall’s explanatory note. Here are all the links

NEW:
A Message from Bishop Mark Lawrence to the Diocese of South Carolina, November 15
South Carolina’s Canon to the Ordinary”¨ Writes the Clergy of the Diocese

A note on Diocese of South Carolina Developments
South Carolina Developments (I)””Two Emails From a TEC Steering Committee Led Group to SC Clergy
South Carolina Developments (II)””Tennessee Bishop offers support to dissident South Carolina clergy
South Carolina Developments (III)””Local Newspaper article on the TEC-Diocese of SC Struggle
South Carolina Developments (IV)””A Priest at Holy Communion, Charleston, leaves and Heads to Rome
South Carolina Developments (V)””Local Newspaper Article on Holy Communion: “Group to leave church”
South Carolina Developments (VI)””Advertisement in the Local paper by the TEC Group
South Carolina Developments (VII)””Another Local newspaper Article, Q and A with the Diocese of SC
South Carolina Developments (VIII)””National Church releases “Fact sheet: The Diocese of South Car.”
South Carolina Developments (IX)””Presiding Bishop backs ecclesiastical coup in South Carolina
Don’t Miss: South Carolina Developments (X)””A.S. Haley’s Analysis of recent Events (apologies, this was mistakenly left off the list of links, thanks to the reader who alerted us!)

Read it all.

The breakup in the Episcopal diocese has led some members of one local parish, the Anglo-Catholic Church of the Holy Communion, to make a move of their own. Five families will follow the Rev. Patrick Allen, curate at Holy Communion, into the arms of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Rev. Dow Sanderson, rector of Holy Communion, will remain part of the Episcopal Church, along with most of the congregation, and strive to be neutral as the drama plays out, he said.

The fracture comes as no surprise; worshippers at this historic downtown parish at 218 Ashley Ave. have long preferred to uphold Catholic traditions.

Read it all.

With sadness I write to tell you that I will be leaving the Church of the Holy Communion at the end of this year; I will deeply miss being a regular part of this parish’s life and ministry, which I love. I also write with joy because I believe that I and my family are following what is “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” for us (Phil 3.14).

God willing, sometime in the next year I will enter in to full communion with and be ordained to the priesthood of the Catholic Church in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter ”“ this is the “Anglican Ordinariate” (essentially a non-geographic diocese) established by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglican Christians who desire to convert to the Catholic Church while maintaining important elements of the Anglican liturgical and pastoral patrimony.

This is a conversion I have desired to make for some years, and I have understood my ministry as an Anglo-Catholic priest in the Episcopal Church as a special vocation to witness to the Catholic faith in the hope (real and possible if not “sure and certain”) of a reunion in the Church larger than my individual conversion. When the establishment of the Ordinariate was announced, I believed (and continue to believe) that the time for that hoped for reunion had come….

Read it all.

Read it all.

A diocesan press statement released on 8 Nov further stated that the rector of the church that was to host the meeting said he had been “misled in offering to host this meeting, expecting it was for a small group of clergy who had already decided to reaffiliate with TEC. ”˜Neither I nor anyone at Holy Communion sent that email,’ said the Rector. ”˜I have notified the sender that we will not be hosts’.”

The diocesan statement further stated Bishop vonRosenberg had “no authority to convene or preside at any meeting in this diocese and to do so would put him in violation of TEC’s canons.”

Bishop von Rosenberg told Anglican Ink the diocesan statement misconstrued his role in the affair.

“A group of loyal Episcopal priests felt the need to gather, for mutual support. They asked me to offer a homily during the liturgy they will share. I had previously been licensed in this diocese by Bishop Lawrence. I certainly felt able to respond to the invitation affirmatively, and I look forward to being with that group,” the bishop said.

Read it all.

You can see the first there and you can see the second there. This second was necessary since the first was sent out without the knowledge or permission of the parish in question.

There have been many relevant articles and pieces of information related to the situation here in the diocese of South Carolina in recent days. I have waited until today to post them since I did not want them lost on Veterans/Remembrance Day yesterday. Please note that I post material here which is in circulation but which is, in some cases, factually false, and in others, embarrassingly biased against the diocese. I trust readers to read and sift things carefully and make their own judgments. If you have questions, ask–KSH.

O God, who hast willed that the gate of mercy should stand open to the faithful: Look on us, and have mercy upon us, we beseech thee; that we who by thy grace are following the path of thy will may continue in the same all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Leonine Sacramentary

He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children;

that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children,

so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments;

and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God….

In spite of all ….[God did for them] they still sinned; despite his wonders they did not believe.

So he made their days vanish like a breath, and their years in terror.

–Psalm 78:5-7; 32-33

Read them all.

According to reports, one of the issues raised by the government team was that one of the mediators had taken contrary position against the government-funded Joint Task Force (JTF), while another was said to have a son fighting alongside the Al-Qaeda in Islamic Magreb (AQIM) in Mali. Another member was said to have only recently been forgiven by the sect after an accusation of financial impropriety.

While such reports were still taken with a pinch of salt by many with the belief that the government and the sect would find a way through, the announcement by General Buhari last week appeared a huge stake. Buhari, while speaking at the Board of Trustees meeting of his party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) said he could not mediate for the sect.

The General said: “How can I represent people I do not know, that I do not believe in whatever their cause is? How can I work for a government that has failed to do the most important thing of protecting lives and property with all the military, with all the resources available? How do I work for them?”

Read it all.

The U.S. will become the world’s top producer of oil within five years, a net exporter of the fuel around 2030 and nearly self-sufficient in energy by 2035, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

It’s a bold set of predictions for a nation that currently imports some 20% of its energy needs.

Recently, however, an “energy renaissance” in the U.S. has caused a boost in oil, shale gas and bio-energy production due to new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fuel efficiency has improved in the transportation sector. The clean energy industry has seen an influx of solar and wind efforts.

Read it all.

As the months have dragged by, a realisation dawned ”“ among the faithful and bookmakers alike ”“ that none of the senior bishops being mentioned was quite right. The field seemed just a bit, well, mediocre.
Not surprising, really: the Church pays rubbish salaries; is very out of fashion; and the female half of humanity is still excluded from consideration. Still, once anyone looked closely, one man appeared to have an exceptional range of talents and a most intriguing CV.
The Church is both appalled by money and, being short of it, fascinated by it. Here was a biblical scholar who had spent the first 11 years of his career in the oil industry: an archbishop for the 21st century. And so the 56-year-old Bishop of Durham came from nowhere to victory. Was the commission guided by heaven? We cannot know. What does seem clear is that they have given him the job from hell.

Read it all.