South Carolina and ACNA developments (I)–TLC: Bishop Edgar Stirs great Controversy by his eucharistic Participation in a service at a local school

The joint blessing of a chapel at a historic school by an Episcopal bishop and an Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) bishop has stirred up deep controversy in the ACNA, with an August 26 statement from its acting primate sharply criticizing the service and promising that the church’s College of Bishops would rule on the situation next month.

Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and Bishop Chip Edgar of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina participated alongside each other at the August 18 blessing of St. Timothy’s Chapel, a 600-seat church on the campus of Charleston’s Porter-Gaud School.

Photos of the event circulating on social media show the two bishops leading prayers together, draping a hanging over the chapel’s altar, laughing, and embracing warmly.

Both bishops are members of the independent Episcopal school’s Board of Trustees, and worked together early in their episcopates to resolve remaining tensions from the 2012 division of the original Diocese of South Carolina

“We took our seats on the board and we pretty quickly built trust,” Woodliff-Stanley said. “We’re not naïve; we know there are differences.”

Differences aside, they blessed the chapel jointly. The event included a Eucharist celebrated by the Rev. David A. Madison, Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES), of which Porter-Gaud is a member. The school’s chaplain, the Rev. Palmer Kennedy, a priest of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, preached.

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