A newly emerged militant sect in Nigeria said it killed seven foreign hostages, a claim the Greek and Italian foreign ministries confimed Sunday, as a violent campaign targeting Europeans across North and West Africa escalates.

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Listen to the webcast here. More Sunday Worship available here

In an interview before the bishop’s address Saturday, the Rev. Jim Lewis, who serves as canon to Lawrence, said that the diocese is solely focused on the future, even in light of the most recent court filing by Bishop Charles vonRosenberg of TEC in South Carolina in which he has also claimed rights to serve as the head of the diocese as a national Episcopal-affiliated organization.

“We have already turned the page, that’s all history,” Lewis said. “We’re moving ahead.”

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O Lord and heavenly Father, who hast given unto us thy people the true bread that cometh down from heaven, even thy Son Jesus Christ: Grant that our souls may so be fed by him who giveth life unto the world, that we may abide in him and he in us, and thy Church be filled with the power of his unending life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frederick Macnutt

Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.

–Psalm 66: 8-9

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nyssa, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest now and for ever.

We praise thee, O God, that thou hast made us members of the Church of Jesus Christ which he purchased with his own blood, and hast called us into a worldwide fellowship of love and service; and now, meeting in his name, we pray that thou wilt preside over this gathering in the power of thy Holy Spirit. So direct our thoughts and our words that all our decisions may be pleasing to thee; enable us to elect to the various offices in our church men and women endowed with the gifts that their service requires; keep us from all misunderstanding, from all dissension, and from every breach of the law of love; and prosper every effort to make Christ known throughout this parish. Thus, O Lord, may thy name be glorified and thy kingdom extended, through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

–Frank Houghton

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

–Romans 6:12-18

FLORENCE, S.C. ”“ In an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation, clergy and delegates of the Diocese of South Carolina gathered Friday evening for an opening Eucharist to their 222nd annual convention.

With a theme that focused primarily on moving forward after their split with the national Episcopal Church, spirits were high among the crowd despite the most recent developments in a legal battle over rights to the Diocese’s name, seal and property.

All Saints Church member Libby Phillips said she feels that the Diocese will now be meeting the needs of a group of people that would not be met otherwise.

“We are just so enthusiastic and excited about what’s happening,” Phillips said. “We’re looking to the future and growth and spirituality.”

Participants and clergy present seemed eager to accept Bishop Mark Lawrence’s call to focus on the future and let the courts decide the more complicated matters of the once-Episcopal affiliated group.

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Statement by Communication Service of Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations on recent changes in family laws in France and Great Britain
Same-sex unions have continued to be legalized in Europe. Recently, respective bills have been approved by the lower chambers of the French and British parliaments. It was done not only in defiance of the opinion of a part of deputies but also against the background of mass protest manifestations of citizens.
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The Russian Orthodox Church preserves and defends the primary Christian understanding of marriage and family, sanctifies marital relations in the church Sacrament and asserts the importance of marriage for the wellbeing and development of society as a whole.

Our Church expresses her solidarity with Christians, adherents to other religions and those proponents of non-religious worldviews who have preserved the traditional understanding of marriage as union of man and woman and come out against the attempts to use a radical legal reform to impose on the whole society a different understanding of marriage unprecedented in human history.

Aware of the danger of these processes, we believe it important to develop dialogue with all the public forces, both religious and non-religious, who support the traditional ideas of family values. This criterion is one of the most important ones in the Russian Orthodox Church’s choice of partners in inter-Christian and interreligious dialogues.

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One can but marvel at the madness that drives megalomania. First of all, it knows no boundaries: no matter what the odds or the ultimate cost, everything can be sacrificed so long as the sacrifice is seen as advancing the goal, which is to annihilate anything that appears to be threatening, or that is not already under complete subjugation. And individual megalomania is as nothing compared to the institutional variety, which signals all too often the last stage of an institution’s eclipse. For when the rank and file are too ensconced in their ways to see where their leaders’ follies and delusions are taking them, then the outrages of those leaders grow in proportion as the institution itself declines.

So it would appear to be in South Carolina. Having learned nothing from their experience with an identically framed federal lawsuit in Fort Worth, the Presiding Bishop and her Chancellor have now spotted Provisional Bishop Charles vonRosenberg to an ill-advised and futile gambit in the Charleston Division of the Federal District Court in South Carolina.

Read it all and there are earlier articles here and here

“…as I was working on the immediately preceding post about the new federal case in South Carolina, my office forwarded the tentative ruling from the Fresno Superior Court on the motion for summary judgment which ECUSA and Bishop Lamb (now Bishop Talton) brought against Bishop John-David Schofield to recover all of the property of his Anglican Diocese.

The tentative ruling was to deny the motion — meaning that the case will have to go to trial before it can be finally decided. In short the court held that the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden on summary judgment: they failed to show, in effect, that a Diocese of the Church is prohibited from leaving it as a matter of law.

ECUSA had tried all of its usual “hierarchical” arguments, but the Court indicates it is not inclined to buy them…”

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From here
He has helped steer the Roman Catholic Church closer to mutuality with Bible believing Protestants to a greater degree than any other pope since the Reformation; he has been a true mentor for orthodox Christians of many denominational stripes and an incomparably better biblical theologian than many who call themselves Protestant; and there has been no more stalwart spiritual warrior against the ideological assault on Christian civilization from without, and its betrayal from within, among his generation.

In the face of the twin twenty – first century threats to the Gospel from Mohammedanism and Secularism, all adherents of Nicene Christianity are better equipped spiritually and intellectually to “fight the good fight” than they were before Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

As we await the emergence of his successor, thanksgiving for the servant leadership of Joseph Ratzinger during the last half century should be both oecumenical and fervent.
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THE POPE EMERITUS OF ROME: CATHOLIC, GODLY, BIBLICAL, AND EVEN A LITTLE PROTESTANT !
by the Dean Emeritus of South Carolina !

As I write, the Roman Catholic Church and indeed many other oecumenically minded Christians find themselves in what might be called a kind of papal limbo! Benedict XVI has stepped down, even though Joseph Ratzinger yet lives amongst us; and a new pope has still to be elected. As our Jewish brothers and sisters say: L’Chaim! To Life!

On the other hand, on the very last day of his papacy I read a scathing judgment of Benedict””of the man personally and equally of his vocational track record””by one of his American communicants, or rather (by self – definition) excommunicants, who also happens to be an alumnus, as am I, of the Episcopal-affiliated University of the South, Sewanee. The writer’s enmity””dating from Cardinal Ratzinger’s time as his predecessor’s putative ”˜enforcer’ of discipline””was expressed in terms doubtless intended to bring to mind the animal analogy of choice among the Pope’s longtime foes, that of the Rottweiler caricature; but it only prompted in me an equal and opposite reaction by way of gratitude for this German Shepherd of a Bishop””many of whose theological views are of course quite foreign to mine!

Half a century ago, long before Joseph Ratzinger became a household name outside oecumenical circles, I was privileged to serve as a theological participant in Anglican – Roman Catholic Dialogue on the Anglican side. The aspiration of that venture remains unfulfilled, but even at that time Joseph Ratzinger was already a sympathetic behind-the-scenes encourager (not ”˜enforcer’!) of it. In 1973, by way of contribution to the official Dialogue, I was commissioned to write an Anglican assessment of the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum.

Working closely with a staunchly evangelical colleague, Jacob Jocz, my conclusion was not only that the document represented a decisive shift away from the Tridentine ”˜two sources’ theory of the role of tradition as equivalent to scripture, but that there were ”˜deconstructive’ trends in biblical criticism on the Anglican side potentially far more subversive of biblical authority than any residual over – emphasis on ecclesiastical tradition by Rome. Dei Verbum reflected a more Reformational stand on the authority of the Bible than did many New Testament faculty members in Episcopal Church seminaries!

Subsequently, as biblical revisionism has increasingly gained the upper hand in the pulpits of the Episcopal Church, the contrast with Benedict’s faithfulness to God’s Word written has been striking.

What’s more, it is in all likelihood his very commitment to the claims of Holy Scripture that accounts for the petulance and calumny to which he is subjected””ironically, in the name of ”˜tolerance’””by self-defined liberals for whom liberalism means libertinism, whether ideological or moral.

As I read my fellow Sewanee alumnus’s diatribe, I realized how axiomatic this attitude has become among those who, frustrated by the Pope’s resistance to their ethical and intellectual nihilism, have cast envious eyes at the Episcopal Church’s explicit denial of ”˜core doctrine’ in faith and morals. Many of them have flounced across the Tiber in reverse direction and are now part of the new profile of the National Cathedral in Washington to All Saints’ Chapel at Sewanee and beyond.

Although I am no fan of the Curial system, of Tridentine ecclesiology, or of Rome’s soteriological compromises in dogma, it seems to this Anglican that Joseph Ratzinger was the providentially right man in the right job(s) for the last several decades.

He has helped steer the Roman Catholic Church closer to mutuality with Bible believing Protestants to a greater degree than any other pope since the Reformation; he has been a true mentor for orthodox Christians of many denominational stripes and an incomparably better biblical theologian than many who call themselves Protestant; and there has been no more stalwart spiritual warrior against the ideological assault on Christian civilization from without, and its betrayal from within, among his generation.

In the face of the twin twenty – first century threats to the Gospel from Mohammedanism and Secularism, all adherents of Nicene Christianity are better equipped spiritually and intellectually to “fight the good fight” than they were before Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

As we await the emergence of his successor, thanksgiving for the servant leadership of Joseph Ratzinger during the last half century should be both oecumenical and fervent.

Save us, O God, from the false piety that parades itself in the eyes of men and women and is not genuine in thy sight; and so sanctify us by thy Holy Spirit that both in heart and life we may serve thee acceptably, to the honour of thy holy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frank Colquhoun (1909-1997)

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

–Romans 6:1-4

222nd Annual Diocesan Convention to be Held in Florence, March 8-9

Psalm 111:7-10 (NIV)
The works of his hands are faithful and just;
all his precepts are trustworthy.
Father, we thank You for the testimony of Your works.
They are established for ever and ever,
enacted in faithfulness and uprightness.
You are worthy of trust, in all places and at all times. You are worthy of trust in the Diocese of South Carolina.
He provided redemption for his people;
he ordained his covenant forever””
holy and awesome is his name.
We proclaim Your holy and awesome Name over the Diocese of South Carolina.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
all who follow his precepts have good understanding.
To him belongs eternal praise.
Grant to the upcoming convention in South Carolina, first and foremost, a fear of the Lord. Amen.
From Lent and Beyond here

and there are more prayers from Lent and Beyond: Canopy of Praise Psalm 118, Psalm 33, and All South Carolina Category Prayers,

More than 350 people are expected to attend the 222nd Annual Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina at the Francis Marion Performing Arts Center in Florence, March 8-9. The last time the Convention was held in Florence was 1976.

This year the Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence, the 14th Bishop of South Carolina, is focusing on the future. “We cannot afford to focus on the backward glance,” said Lawrence “Christ calls us to look forward and carry out the Great Commission to make disciples and to proclaim the Gospel to a hurting world.”

This year’s convention workshops are designed to equip the Diocese’s lay members and clergy for the work of ministry. Bishop Lawrence promised that such workshops would be key parts of future annual Diocesan Conventions….

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Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

Listen here – Service Sheet is here

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..Okoh warned people to be wary of ongoing campaigns by promoters of the practice which was now in vogue among Anglican priests and others in Europe, stressing that the practice specifically contravened the law of marriage as instituted by God.

He also said such sustained campaign in the United States, Europe and some political forces in Nigeria to force “us to accept and approve same sex marriage” was misplaced.

“We are proud to say we stand by our belief in the true word of God, as we will never be part of such unholy practice presently destroying the Church of God in Europe,” Okoh said.

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Recently translated, an interesting reflection on the issues and implementation of Vatican II, the church, the media and the future of the church
“..I am very grateful for your prayers, which I have sensed, as I said on Wednesday ”“ almost palpably. And although I am about to withdraw, I remain close to all of you in prayer, and I am sure that you too will be close to me, even if I am hidden from the world.

For today, given the conditions brought on by my age, I have not been able to prepare an extended discourse, as might have been expected; but rather what I have in mind are a few thoughts on the Second Vatican Council, as I saw it. I shall begin with an anecdote:…”

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O God the King of saints, who didst strengthen thy servants Perpetua and Felicitas and their companions to make a good confession, staunchly resisting, for the cause of Christ, the claims of human affection, and encouraging one another in their time of trial: Grant that we who cherish their blessed memory may share their pure and steadfast faith, and win with them the palm of victory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O Lord our God, long-suffering and full of compassion: Be present with us, we beseech thee, as we continue in this season in which we make ready to recall our Saviour’s sufferings and to celebrate his triumph. Grant us the aid of thy Holy Spirit, that as we acknowledge our sins, and implore thy pardon, we may also be enabled to deny ourselves, and be upheld in the hour of temptation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

–Psalm 42:1-2

Listen to Bishop Mark Lawrence’s sermon on Luke 17:11-19 from St Michael’s Charleston on February 3rd here

..it is a small, unremarkable oblong of clay almost 9 inches long and 4 inches in circumference. It is battered and broken””and half of it is missing””but on the cylinder, densely carved, is the new king’s manifesto. It offers freedom to Babylon’s slaves and their right to worship their own gods.

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O Thou who hast prepared a place for my soul, prepare my soul for that place. Prepare it with holiness; prepare it with desire; and even while it sojourneth upon earth, let it dwell in heaven with thee, beholding the beauty of thy countenance and the glory of thy saints, now and for evermore.

–Joseph Hall