“We’ve seen it coming for years. It’s not a rival denomination. At best, it would be a church within a church,” said the Very Rev. John Burwell of the Church of the Holy Cross, which has congregations on Sullivan’s Island and Daniel Island. “They’re still part of the Anglican Church. They just don’t want to be part of the Episcopal Church,” he said.
“We intend to stay and fight. We intend to stay in the Episcopal Church and act as the conscience of the Episcopal Church,” Burwell said.
Read it all (essentially the AP article with local reaction).
Good article. I was surprised at the absence of any major anglican leaders outside NA. Is the message there that the Southern Cone and others want this to operate with its own energy now?
Clearly, the Network was an attempt at a Church within a Church but the New Anglican Province is not. It is the formation of those who uphold and continue to uphold the Tradition of Anglicanism Christian to the world. The EC has reinterpreted Anglicanism into something it never was. As such, this is a reform movement for there is no hope of reform of the EC and as we can see by the recent actions of the PB no dissection will be tolerated. This is the amazing contradiction of the EC that we are tolerant and diverse. The EC insist on being monochrome. The New Theology must be embrace and the other stamped out.
Regarding John Burwell’s statement…good luck with that John. I do not believe the leadership of the EC will accept SC being their conscience or appreciating your witness. But God bless your efforts.
To Dr. Seitz, forming a new province is messy. I suspect that more is going on in the back ground then most of us realize. In any case, the Primates will let their opinion be known in due time and we will not have to guess.
Please excuse my spelling errors…I type too fast to keep up with my thoughts.
Of course it is ‘messy’ but I was simply curious as we read something about +Mouneer and +Chew signing the constitution, etc. The press event was a modest affair. This is not a criticism. It may well be, as I said, that the intention is to have the province begin to operate independently. That seemed to be intimated in several of the remarks.
Dr. Seitz I nor am I implying anything of the sort.
Blessings
The “inside reform” has accomplished so much that I cannot imagine giving up on it – NOT. Appalling actually to ignore the manipulation of this Diocese of SC by the national entity in the last election of its Bishop and to contend that change is possible from within. Still, De Nile is not just a river in Egypt! It has a confluence in the Santee and Cooper rivers, too.
A Sandlapper born and reared, now midcontinental!
Burwell+ reveals the split that has formed in SC. There are at least three if not more groups: liberals (Episcopal Forum of SC), conservatives who want to leave, and Burwell+ types who are conservative but don’t want to give their property up (this may or not be the case specifically with Burwell+). It should be a most interesting diocesan convention in March – +Lawrence clearly has his hands full – please pray for him!
Also of interest globally will be the Primates meeting and what sort of support this new province can garner at it. Will the Global South split off if the new province is not recognized? Hmmm……
Chris…I believe you are right on target. The question will be what do the people of SC want….Knowing Charlestonians as I do…I will be in prayer for everyone, especially Bishop Lawrence.
Gang, may I pose the $62,000 question? When will the Diocese of SC align itself w/ true conservatives, and get out of the eternal waiting game of trying to reform the apostate TEC? In today’s Charleston newspaper this new group would seem the perfect opportunity. And isn’t one of the 4 members, Fresno/San Joaquin, where Bishop Lawrence came from? I love my particular parish, which is quite spiritually alive, but am tired of waiting. At some pt don’t we have to declare ourselves?
I say, bravo, John Burwell. Well said.
[b]#7, Chris:[/b] I have to quibble with your description of the 3rd group — [i]conservative but don’t want to give their property up.[/i] You should consider that there are also conservatives who have decided they don’t want to leave — and, while they undoubtedly don’t [i]want[/i] to give up their church buildings, affection for a specific building is far from being the source of their motivation.
I should know — I’m one of them.
[b]#7, #8, & #9:[/b] I love my parish church, but that would not be enough to stop me from leaving. Instead, like Fr. Burwell, I feel called to stay and keep trying. Bp. Salmon always said that he’d never known of any problem being solved by people who wouldn’t speak to each other. (He also talked about the importance of relationships, and community.) Staying isn’t easy — it’s often painful, and leaves me deeply sad and terribly angry — but I intend to keep trying, and doing my best to maintain hope and avoid despair.
To Chris in reply #7:
Before you sat down to the keyboard to make your condemnatory judgment of me, did it even occur to you that you that since you clearly do not know me, you might pick up the phone and ask me if I actually fit into one of the three categories you seem to have invented and put me in? Could you have at least sent me an email before you labeled me? (I’m in the diocesan directory.)
I don’t believe I know you, but I can emphatically state that you do not know me if you think that buildings matter to me. Holy Cross has indeed been blessed in the area of buildings, but the physical structures are not what makes Holy Cross, Holy Cross. If we had to lose our buildings tomorrow, God would take care of us. He always has and He always will. I have no idea why you would chose to say such a thing, but I would like to say this again – you clearly do not know me, even though you have taken the liberty to categorize me.
Prentis Finley of the local paper called me yesterday afternoon. Why me? I have no idea; he didn’t say. His opening question was, “I just read an AP story that said a group of disgruntled Episcopalians just voted to form a new denomination. Would you like to comment on that?†My answer was that he had it wrong. I told him that this was not a new denomination; it was a new province within the Anglican Church. I said it was not a “new church†because it is still the same Church (the Anglican Communion) but in a sense what it will have to be is sort of like a church within the Church. I did not infer that it was a church within the Episcopal Church. (I’m certain that the Canadians, the REC and others that will be in the new province would beg to differ.) It is a branch of the Anglican Communion, and not a new denomination. I used the Church within a church†analogy is because I firmly believe that the new province is not schismatic. The new province is not a breakoff from the Episcopal Church, nor is it trying to be a rival to the Episcopal Church. It is trying to be (and I think it will become) a new province within Anglicanism.
I told Mr. Finley that we saw this coming years ago and that I personally am delighted to see it happen. He then asked when the Diocese of SC would join them. I said it was our hope to stay and fight and be the conscience of the Episcopal Church. Is that possible? It may not be much fun, but yeah, it’s possible. Will the EC listen and change their ways? I’ll leave conversions to the Sovereign Lord.
I don’t believe I was misquoted by Mr. Finley. Frankly, I thought all this came out in the story. I now see that some could and did interpret it differently than I meant it to be. One would think that our recent Standing Committee resolutions (passed unanimously) would speak for themselves. Oh well.
For you, Chris, whoever you are, I would hope that you would resist the all-too-easy way, which is to tear down people while hiding behind the power of a keyboard. Your labeling of me was incorrect. Gossip (which is Biblically what you did in your comment about me) tears down and divides. Talk to me before you judge me to be something I am not. Thank you, and may our Lord continue to bless you.
And interesting response +Burwell. Nevertheless, I am interested in discovering how you and those with you can be the conscience of a church which has made it abundantly clear that it has no use for you or your position? What, in reality, can you do? What power do you have? Who is listening to you? Kendall has chosen to stay to, but I cannot understand that either. You KNOW that TEC is dying; the symptoms are everywhere. I can understand a love that will not leave the bedside of an old friend, but I do NOT understand the hope that you can, by suasion, breathe life into the moribund.
Larry
[b]#12, Larry Morse:[/b] Obviously, I am not Fr. Burwell (though, in case he is curious, we do know each other). You didn’t pose your question to me, but I’ll offer a small answer — speaking for myself only, of course, and not Fr. Burwell.
Personally, I have little to no power in the national Church. I doubt anyone there is listening to me. In reality, in the end, it may be that I can do nothing to change the course of TEC. But — well, have you ever heard people say (usually of someone they consider to be a “slacker”) that, if you never try, then you never risk failing? The basic idea, of course, is that if you fear failure, and if you never really try to succeed, then at least you can tell yourself that you didn’t fail — whereas if you [i]do[/i] try and you fail, well, that prospect seems much more painful.
I offer this by way of analogy. If I don’t bother to try, then hey, it’s not [i]my[/i] fault if TEC eventually goes off the rails (and over the side of the bridge into the gorge). But if everyone reacts that way — if no-one is willing to try, to stay and work, despite the poor odds of success and high likelihood of personal pain — well, then there’s no chance at all, is there?
Or, to re-state something I mentioned before, no problem has ever been resolved by people who throw up their hands, say there’s nothing they can do, and walk away.
Thank you, John Burwell+, for your strong Christian leadership.
I have contacted John Burwell directly about this issue – rest assured I am very sorry about his interpretation of my post and I consider him a person of considerable Christian character.