In support of Bishop Lawrence, members of the West Charleston Deanery have issued “A Call to Prayer,” inviting members of their Deanery to join in a time of fasting and prayer for Bishop Lawrence March 16-18 prior to the House of Bishop’s Meeting (March 19-24). The Deanery has scheduled a gathering of prayer and worship for Thursday, March 18 at 7:00 p.m. at Saint James, James Island. Following that gathering, churches from the deanery have signed up to pray for the Bishop every day of the House of Bishops’ meeting through and including our Diocesan Convention, March 26. As Craige Borrett, Dean of the West Charleston Deanery noted, “We need to remember that, ‘Prayer isn’t preparation for the battle. It is the battle.’” View the related Bulletin Insert.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * South Carolina

Another resolution proposed by the standing committee would add a diocesan canon that says the bishop — or, in a bishop’s absence, the standing committee — is “the sole and final authority with respect to any dispute concerning the interpretation of the Constitution and Canons of this Diocese.”

A canonical revision, also proposed by the standing committee, grants the diocese’s bishop (or standing committee) the authority to “provide a generous pastoral response to parishes in conflict with the Diocese or Province, as the Ecclesiastical Authority judges necessary, to preserve the unity and integrity of the Diocese.”

An explanatory note on that resolution says: “We’ve experienced now as a diocese, in the All Saints, Pawleys Island litigation, the destructive force of such litigation; how it has created animosities and divisions that are not easily healed. It has failed as a positive cohesive force for maintaining the unity of the church and has in fact had precisely the opposite effect. Christians are suing Christians (1 Cor. 6:1-8); the reputation of the church is marred, and vital resources are diverted from essential Kingdom work. None of this is honoring to our Savior.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Diocesan Conventions • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

See what you make of it.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Identity • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • TEC Diocesan Conventions • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Here is one:

Proposed Resolution R-2 2010 Convention


Offered by: The Standing Committee

Subject: Response to Ecclesiastical Intrusions by the Presiding Bishop

RESOLVED, That this 219th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina affirms its legal and ecclesiastical authority as a sovereign diocese within the Episcopal Church, and be it further

RESOLVED, That this Convention declares the Presiding Bishop has no authority to retain attorneys in this Diocese that present themselves as the legal counsel for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, and be it finally


RESOLVED, That the Diocese of South Carolina demands that the Presiding Bishop drop the retainer of all such legal counsel in South Carolina as has been obtained contrary to the express will of this Diocese, which is The Episcopal Church within its borders.

Read them carefully and read them all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • TEC Diocesan Conventions • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Like the diocesan chancellor, Bishop Lawrence viewed the TEC attorney’s actions as adversarial and a challenge to his and the diocese’s authority. Lawrence asked members of the diocese to not strike out in unilateral directions and told them he would be communicating to them in the days leading up to their new convention date.

The Diocese of South Carolina and its bishop have been critical of the national church. In October of 2009, the diocese voted, among other things, that it would limit its involvement with TEC bodies that assented to actions contrary to the faith.

It also appears that the Diocese of South Carolina will not join in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the case against All Saint’s Waccamaw Island.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

It was the first time the three biggest black Methodist denominations convened in 45 years, and they gathered with a transcendent purpose in mind: to address the plight of the black male, who is disproportionately unemployed and incarcerated in the United States.

The "Great Gathering," a three-day convention held in Columbia last week (despite a continuing NAACP boycott of South Carolina), drew at least 2,000 members of the African Episcopal Methodist Church, African Episcopal Methodist Zion Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

Organized by the Rev. Staccato Powell, pastor of Grace Church in Raleigh, the event featured speeches by Children's Defense Fund founder and President Marian Wright Edelman and social critic Cornel West.

Edelman said the cradle-to-prison pipeline in which so many black men get caught is sufficient reason to start a new civil rights movement.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • Race/Race Relations • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • * South Carolina

"Self-denial." wrote Cardinal John Henry Newman, "is a subject never out of place in Christian teaching." It is never out of place because it is a way of putting the cross, the pattern of Christ's sacrifice, at the very center of our daily lives. It is especially appropriate during the forty days of Lent. "If anyone would come after me," said Jesus, "let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Let him deny himself--this is not just refraining from sin; nor practicing what earlier Christians called mortification, that action through the Holy Spirit of putting to death sin in the Christian's life (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5): though certainly it includes this. Rather it is walking in the way of sacrificial obedience to Christ's call. This includes at times giving up what one might rightly and legitimately use. As St. Paul writes "'All things are lawful' but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful but I will not be enslaved by anything." (I Cor. 6:12-14; see also I Cor.10:23)

The Ash Wednesday liturgy includes self-denial, along with self-examination, prayer and fasting, as one of the disciplines for the observance of a holy Lent. Yet self-denial is rarely even mentioned these days within the Church. Is it any wonder in this increasingly indulgent society that it is not at the top of most lists or dimensions in Christian discipleship? To be sure this discipline, like the other spiritual disciplines can fall prey to a form of perfectionism which denies the grace and freedom we have in Christ; yet, nevertheless, when employed from grace and through God's grace there is godly freedom, even delight, in these disciplines, especially the discipline of self-denial.

Read more...

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Lent • * South Carolina • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

The 5-million strong black Methodist denominations pledged Wednesday to raise $10 million and recruit 1 million volunteers to stem an epidemic of failure and imprisonment among young black males.

Bishops and members of the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion and the Christian Methodist Episcopal denominations wrapped up their historic "Great Gathering" meeting by adopting the 28-page Male Investment Plan.

The proposal, worked out over three days of meetings among leaders of the three Christian denominations, calls for implementing a series of Saturday Academies at AME, AMEZ and CME congregations around the country, establishing collaboratives with historically black colleges and universities, and developing deep mentoring bonds with youths between the ages of 5 and 25.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • * South Carolina

It soon could be illegal to text and drive in this town.

On Monday, three of four members of the Police, Legal and Judicial Committee, including Mayor Billy Swails, voted to ban text messaging while driving.

The mayor called for a public hearing on the issue at a council meeting April 13.

Statistics show texting behind the wheel distracts drivers, Swails said.

"It's not about your liberties. It's about safety."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • Travel • * South Carolina

The Rev. Don Robinson Sr. scribbled notes fast and furiously Monday as children's advocate Marian Wright Edelman described the "cradle to prison pipeline" that has trapped young African-American males in a cycle of poverty, criminality, joblessness and despair.

Edelman was blunt in her assessment of the crisis that brought leaders and members of three prominent African-American denominations to Columbia for the three-day Great Gathering, a meeting that bishops said Monday was prompted by the "call of God."

Robinson, a pastor from McBee who ministers to inmates at the Kershaw Correctional Center, is witness on a weekly basis to the tribulations that plague the young black inmates who enter his class hoping to learn how to study the Bible.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Men • * South Carolina

Asked at a press conference held on Feb 22, what prayers should be offered for South Carolina, Bishop Jefferts Schori said she “would hope that Episcopalians in South Carolina have a clear understanding” of the church’s polity and “not rely upon erroneous information.”

The focus on South Carolina arose from pleas to her office from distressed members of the diocese. “My understanding is that Episcopalians in South Carolina are concerned about those who have departed and are attempting to keep the Episcopal Church’s property,” she said.

Asked by CEN whether she was referring to the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) as the source of this “erroneous information” the presiding bishop said that “Episcopalians, like many others, often seek information from the internet. They are looking at sources that are not peer reviewed, or rely on opinions. The representations on the theology of the church as a whole are inaccurate.”

The President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, Mrs. Bonnie Anderson added that there was an “influx of information coming from sources outside the official bodies” of the Episcopal Church.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * South Carolina

Bishop Lawrence did raise questions about the appropriateness of a hostile legal probe occurring within his diocese, and noted that he has not heard from the Presiding Bishop regarding this probe.

But he also explained the deeper motivation of his decision to delay the diocese’s convention for three weeks: “This is not a time for precipitous action; nor is it a time for congregations or members to strike out in unilateral directions destructive to the common life and witness God has called us to make in the world and the Church.”

If this is a bishop willfully disregarding the rights of Episcopalians within his diocese, he has a strange way of showing it. No: What Bishop Lawrence is disregarding is the Presiding Bishop’s lawsuit-happy response to any congregation that votes itself out of affiliation with the Episcopal Church.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Lately in the Prayers of the People you may have heard us praying for Paul and Cheryl Minor of All Saints, Belmont. They are the Reverends Mr. and Mrs. Paul and Cheryl Minor, the Co-Rectors of All Saints Episcopal Church in Belmont, Massachusetts. We are praying for this couple and their church as we begin to create a Resolution #3 relationship with them and All Saints. Resolution #3 was one of the resolutions passed at our Diocesan Special Convention back in October of last year. That resolution encouraged us to form pastoral relationships with parishes and dioceses, both domestic and foreign to aid and support them as God forms a new Global Anglicanism. Many are paying a high price to defend and proclaim the orthodox faith, the Good News of Salvation bought for us by the Blood of Jesus Christ. Just as some are dying for their faith in parts of the world, Paul and Cheryl are paying a high price to proclaim Jesus as Savior and Lord. Paul has just been restored to active sacramental ministry after being inhibited for two years by Bishop Shaw of the Diocese of Massachusetts. The power of the church has always been built on the blood, the hardships of the martyrs. I pray the hardships the Minor’s are enduring may inspire you in your own faith and growth.

--Arthur Jenkins

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * South Carolina

You may find the links here from the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham this week.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Lent • Parish Ministry • Preaching / Homiletics • * South Carolina

Doug LeBlanc, The Living Church: In the ENS (Episcopal News Service) report on Friday, you indicated that the PB spoke about the situation in South Carolina, asking people pray for the people in SC. What change do you hope to see as a result of those prayers?

PB: I want a clear understanding of realities of TEC and don’t want the people of South Carolina to rely on erroneous information, provided by other sources.

Bonnie Anderson: Have heard from several of the deputies from south Carolina. They have a desire for clear and accurate information; prayer all across the church for this situation....

George Conger, reporter at large: to the PB and President: You both expressed receiving erroneous information in SC. What is this erroneous information? Where did it come from?

PB: Episcopalians, like many others who use the internet, seek information that is not subject to peer review [Ed. Note: as information is in academic circles.] They rely on opinion, not fact. The South Carolina representation of our theology and polity as a whole is not accurate. There are stated processes of this Church that are not accurate. I would encourage South Carolinians to ask bodies of TEC that are responsible for these decisions and get their facts straight.

Bonnie Anderson: There is a large influx of information coming from multiple sources. It is really important for people who are going to be voting on something to get accurate information on the issues before them. Fox example, and this is just hypothetical, can a diocese leave TEC? What is the process for that concern? What have we agreed to in the General Convention over the years with regard to that?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • TEC Data • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * South Carolina

[Presiding Bishop Katharine] Jefferts Schori concluded her remarks by telling council members that "things are heating up in South Carolina."

She noted that Diocese of South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence has delayed the diocese's annual convention and attributed the delay "supposedly to my incursions in South Carolina."

"He's telling the world that he is offended that I think it's important that people who want to stay Episcopalians there have some representation on behalf of the larger church," she said, asking for the council's prayers for the people of the diocese.

In a Feb. 9 letter to the diocese Lawrence said that the convention would be delayed from March 4-5 to March 26 in order for him, the diocesan standing committee and the diocese "to adequately consider a response" to what he called an "unjust intrusion into the spiritual and jurisdictional affairs of this sovereign diocese of the Episcopal Church."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Meanwhile, the Diocese of South Carolina’s former chancellor, Thomas T. Tisdale, has sent a series of letters to its current chancellor, Wade H. Logan III, regarding four other parishes, some of which have distanced themselves from the Episcopal Church.

In the letters, which he began sending on Jan. 25, Tisdale identified himself as “South Carolina counsel for the Episcopal Church.” Bishop Lawrence challenged this description in an open letter to the diocese on Feb. 9 [PDF].

“He may be an attorney retained by the Chancellor for the Presiding Bishop, but it is hardly accurate in regards to the polity of this Church to claim to be an attorney of The Episcopal Church, as if the parishes, Standing Committee, and Bishop of South Carolina are somehow something other than The Episcopal Church,” the bishop wrote.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

Dear Friends in Christ,

If you have never lived in snow country where the roads are salted because of snow and ice, you may not know how salt can corrode the fenders and undergirding of your car. I remember seeing, one morning as I drove to work, an oncoming car lose its rear wheels and chassis. The trunk of the car hit the asphalt with sparks and scraping, while the rear axle and wheels went rolling off the road and into a vacant field. Since no one was hurt, I couldn't help snickering to myself at the jocular scene, when I was suddenly arrested by the sobering thought: "Mark, when was the last time you examined the frame of your car?" Most of us, before we go on a cross-country trip, will check the oil, tires, brakes, and fill the gas tank. Yet surprisingly enough, many of us on the great journey of the Christian life, traveling over rough roads, in bad weather, icy passes and lonely barren deserts, demonstrate an all too lackadaisical attitude to the equipment of our spiritual lives.

Lent is a good season to do what Evelyn Underhill calls spiritual stocktaking. In the disciplines of the Christian life this is called "Self-Examination." It is the first discipline mentioned in the Ash Wednesday invitation to a Holy Lent. The Prayer Book reads: "I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word." (BCP, p. 265)

Although Self-Examination, or "the examination of conscience" as it used to be called, is a long honored discipline of the Christian life, too often the average Christian not only doesn't know how to do it, he doesn't even know what it is. This of course is not his fault; it is the fault of us who are pastors and teachers in the Church. Ironically, 12 Step groups like A.A. and N.A. make important use of this discipline. The Fourth Step of A.A. reads: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." The Fifth Step follows up: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Sixth Step: " Were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character."

Read more...

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Lent • * South Carolina • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

While the CoE debate was in some ways a proxy fight between TEC and AC-NA, conservatives still within the denomination received a jarring message when Lawrence announced an emergency postponement of the diocese’s annual convention, stating that “the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor, if not the Presiding Bishop herself, is seeking to build a case against the Ecclesiastical Authorities of the Diocese (Bishop and Standing Committee) and some of our parishes.”

According to Lawrence, the Chancellor of the diocese was informed in December of 2009 that a local attorney had been retained by the Chancellor of the Presiding Bishop to represent The Episcopal Church in some "local matters."

The following month, a series of letters requesting documents from diocesan records were sent to the South Carolina chancellor. Requested records included lists of all persons ordained since October 24, 2009, all parish bylaws and amendments since 2006; all Standing Committee Minutes since the episcopacy of former South Carolina Bishop Salmon; parish charters, parish founding documents, parish deeds, parish mortgages, documents evidencing parish participation in diocesan programs and others.

Lawrence indicated the collection of information by the Presiding Bishop’s office was unprecedented, and vigorously asserted that he was the only bishop with canonical jurisdiction. In the Episcopal Church, the Presiding Bishop acts as a “first among equals,” not unlike the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Outside of actions by the General Convention, she does not hold authority over diocesan bishops as an Archbishop would.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

There are a lot of fun pictures here.

Filed under: * General Interest • Weather • * South Carolina

The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina announced last week it was rescheduling its Diocesan Convention, originally slated to begin March 4 at St. Paul's Church in Summerville, to March 26 so it could "adequately consider a response to (an) unprecedented incursion into the affairs of the diocese," according to a pastoral letter by Bishop Mark Lawrence.

A recent exchange of letters between attorneys, available for viewing on the diocese's newly designed Web site (http://www.diosc.com), has prompted the delay.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

...Am I surprised that TEC's next target will be Bishop Mark Lawrence, or the Diocese of South Carolina, or parishes within that diocese? Absolutely not, albeit that I must admit to being somewhat taken aback by their timing.

My lawyer instincts suggest to me that South Carolina's initial response to the requests made to them by local counsel hired by 815 and seeking diocesan documents, including documents specifically related to certain parishes was absolutely the right one - - "no." More importantly, the fundamental initial reason for the refusal was quite properly to point out that any such requests, if proper at all, should be made from Katharine Jefferts Schori in her capacity as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church to Bishop Lawrence as the Diocesan of The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina (and assuming that "her office" affords her any basis to make such requests). After all, there is no pending litigation and, if as the "local lawyer" suggested in his request that there are no plans for litigation, one must logically conclude that there is no need for lawyers to be the vehicles for communication. Of course, we all know that litigation is precisely "the plan" and therefore there is no foundation for trust between the Chancellor and counsel for the Diocese of South Carolina and 815's "local counsel...."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

As many as 50,000 Lowcountry residents are without power this morning as a result of the snow.

An estimated 12,500 people are without power in Charleston and 14,000 more in the Summerville area, according to SCE&G.

Berkeley County Electric Co-op is reporting another 20,000 outages, down from more than 32,000 at its peak early this morning.

The Highway Patrol is urging motorists to stay off the icy and slushy roads unless absolutely necessary.

We lost power and have lots of downed limbs. The yard is a winter wonderland. Wow. Read it all.

Update: The local newspaper photogallery is here and local residents sent in photos there.

Filed under: * General Interest • Weather • * South Carolina

...[You]should appreciate the following points:

1. There is currently a decision by South Carolina's highest court which holds that the Dennis Canon is not self-executing (i.e., no trust was created on any parish property in South Carolina when it was enacted -- if indeed it ever was -- in 1979).

2. The Episcopal Church (USA) did not see fit to request a review of that decision by the United States Supreme Court. Instead, its Presiding Bishop and her chancellor have left that function to the dissident parish members who lost their claim in that case to be the true vestry of All Saints Waccamaw.

3. Notwithstanding its failure to seek review of the adverse South Carolina decision, the Episcopal Church (USA) is apparently asking the Diocese for proof that it intends to enforce the Dennis Canon against certain parishes in the event that they try to leave.

4. The unspoken threat -- which has caused Bishop Lawrence to postpone his diocesan convention while he plans a response to ECUSA's provocations -- is that if Bishop Lawrence fails to sue any departing parish under the Dennis Canon, he could be charged with "abandonment" in the same manner as was Bishop Duncan.

If this is a correct representation of what is going on in South Carolina, then I have to say that it boggles the mind....

Read it very carefully and read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

In a volley reminiscent of the firing of cannon at Fort Sumter in reverse, a Charleston lawyer under the direction of the Episcopal Church headquarters in New York City has fired a series of accusations of secession at the Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina and his flock. As a result the bishop has announced a three-week postponement of the 219th annual diocesan convention until March 26 to give him and his allies time to gather their forces.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

February 9, 2010

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Greetings in the strong name of Jesus Christ whose word calls us to conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day.

I write to announce a change in the date of our upcoming Diocesan Convention which was scheduled for March 4_5'" at St. Paul's, Summerville. According to our Diocesan Constitution and Canons the Ecclesiastical Authority may "for sufficient cause" change the date of the Convention. I, with the unanimous concurrence of the Standing Committee, have so done. The 219'" Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina will now be held at St. Paul's, Summerville on March 26, 2010.

The Chancellor of the diocese, Mr. Wade Logan, was informed in December of 2009 that a local attorney had been retained by the Chancellor of the Presiding Bishop to represent The Episcopal Church in some "local matters." Then, beginning in January of 2010, a series of letters requesting various documents from our diocesan records were sent sequentially to our chancellor, leading us to believe that perhaps the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor, if not the Presiding Bishop herself, is seeking to build a case against the Ecclesiastical Authorities of the Diocese (Bishop and Standing Committee) and some of our parishes. These requests (which can be viewed here) seek from the Diocese and about certain parishes: lists of all persons ordained since October 24, 2009; all parish bylaws and amendments since 2006; all Standing Committee Minutes since the episcopacy of Bishop Salmon; parish charters, parish founding documents, parish deeds, parish mortgages, documents evidencing parish participation in diocesan programs and others. In some cases, the stated reason for the information requested is the assertion that these parishes have left the Diocese of South Carolina because of changes made to their respective bylaws. However, these parishes have not made these changes with the intention of leaving the Diocese of South Carolina, nor have they left. I have been working with their clergy and lay leaders to find appropriate ways to resolve their struggles with the recent decisions of the General Convention in ways consistent with the Holy Scriptures, our common life and fellowship in Christ, as well as with the canons of the Church and the laws of the State of South Carolina.

Read more...

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * South Carolina

I have been exploring the funeral and burial customs of impoverished people in the Latino community of upstate South Carolina. I began doing this recently after considering the high cost of funerals in general.

Some impoverished Latinos could not claim the bodies of their deceased because they could not pay for a burial or have the loved one returned to the home country.

Horror stories from the field made me uncomfortable. As an educator, my mind scanned "disenfranchised grief" sections of my textbooks and workshop handouts.

Not being able to grieve and mourn according to custom is a great loss to bear. The mourning is made worse in environments where the grievers are not recognized by the larger society as people entitled to experience their grief.

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • * South Carolina • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

Sanford tells NPR's Renee Montagne that she did not attend her husband's news conference for two reasons.

"One, he didn't ask me," she said, "but if he had asked me, I would've said no. Two, we were separated. I don't know what I would have stood by him about...."

"Talk about another gut punch," Sanford tells Montagne. "I said, 'gee whiz. He saw me as an adviser and wanted me to give him political advice about how he was received.'"

Asked what she told her husband, Sanford recalls saying, "'Are you kidding? You cried for your lover and said very little of me or the boys."

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Check it out.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * South Carolina • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theology: Scripture

A half-dozen men with ball caps and beer cans hovered around Kemper Dickinson as he unloaded a steaming mass of brats onto a kitchen table already brimming with pig and cow products.

The grill outside Dickinson's West Ashley home sizzled and popped with still more sausages, their casings sweating under the heat of the fiery coals. The closest thing on hand to a vegetable was a tray of jalapeno peppers swaddled in bacon.

Welcome to a Man Cave gathering.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • * South Carolina

Here’s a sign of the times: when Jenny Sanford sat down to tell her young sons that their father, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, was having an affair, one of them reacted in an unusually worldly way.

“Oh my gosh,” exclaimed 13-year-old Bolton Sanford. “This is going to be worse than Eliot Spitzer.”

--Janet Maslin in her book review in this past Thursday's NY Times

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * South Carolina • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

John Pipkin is a retired pilot. He's held many jobs, most recently working for Netjets International, flying celebrities around.

These days, he flies relief workers, medical teams and humanitarian aid from airstrip to airstrip in Haiti.

His wife, Joyce, is the volunteer coordinator of the Haitian ministry at their church, St. Mary's Episcopal in Columbia, which sponsors a parish and its school in Les Cayes, a town in the southwest section of the country.

The Pipkins travel together at least three times a year helping the needy, coordinating mission work, assisting the international community of aid workers and supporting local clergy. They visited Charleston Southern University on Wednesday to share their story.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • * South Carolina

Check it out.

Filed under: * General Interest • Weather • * South Carolina

Check them out. Note that there is a slideshow option if you prefer that.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * South Carolina • * Theology

Politicians, including Obama, had been highlighting the dilapidated Dillon County school for more than a year by the time of Obama's February 2009 speech. He and several other presidential candidates visited the school during the run-up to the 2008 election. And Obama first brought national media attention to the students' plight in August 2007, when he winced as a high-pitched train whistle interrupted lessons during his visit.

All but $4 million of the federal money the county is receiving is a loan, which the area will pay back using revenue from a 1-cent sales tax levied in 2007, Rogers said. Some of the money will be used to refurbish existing facilities and build a new early childhood development center. But about $25 million will go toward building a new J.V. Martin Junior High School.

The school is in a rural swath along Interstate 95 in the state's northeastern corner known as the Corridor of Shame, after a 2005 documentary about conditions in schools there. The school itself is a hodgepodge of buildings; the original part, a former church, dates to 1896, and the latest section was added in 1955. The auditorium, built in 1917, was condemned in 2008 by the state fire marshal.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • * South Carolina

The college basketball world, and possibly even the President of the United States, was atuned to the new No. 1 team in the nation.

The story line got turned over, however, by No. 2: Devan Downey.

In an incredible performance, Downey led South Carolina to its first victory against a top-ranked team.

South Carolina stunned Kentucky 68-62 before a frenzied crowd and behind its diminutive star.

What a great picture--read it all.

Filed under: * South Carolina

Robert Gagnon, an associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, addressed the argument that St. Paul condemned only exploitative or pederastic homosexual behavior and he knew nothing of homosexual orientation or partnerships among peers. Dr. Gagnon argued that both were well- known in ancient Greece and Rome, and — while tolerated — were often condemned even by pagan writers.

Edith Humphrey, the William F. Orr professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, critiqued the writings of three theologians: Carter Heyward, Sarah Coakley and Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. Dr. Humphrey was especially critical of Dr. Rogers’ comparing human sexual intimacy to the relationship among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Rev. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, recently retired bishop of the Church of England’s Diocese of Rochester, spoke on theological differences between Christianity and Islam. The bishop cited Yale scholar Lamin Sanneh, a convert from Islam, who argues that the Bible, in contrast to the Quran, has an innate “translatability,” and therefore impels believers to shape their own cultures. The Bible’s very plasticity invites engagement with each new culture rather than retreat.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • * South Carolina • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Ted Cox worked as an electrician for 27 years before losing his job last April when his employer filed for bankruptcy.

Cox was earning $19 an hour but now makes ends meet on $351 in weekly unemployment benefits. He also receives $113 monthly in food stamps.

"There's nobody hiring," Cox said.

Two daughters, ages 13 and 17, live with him. His children qualify for Medicaid. He has no medical insurance. "God help me if I go out there and break my leg," he said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * South Carolina

You may find the agenda here; we appreciate your prayers.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * South Carolina

When Ty'Sheoma Bethea wrote to Congress to plead for help for her crumbling junior high school, she was just "a little girl from Dillon" trying to make a difference. She never dreamed it would earn her an invitation to President Barack Obama's first State of the Union address.

Ty'Sheoma's initiative not only earned her national acclaim, it got the ball rolling to finally fix her old school in South Carolina's so-called "Corridor of Shame." And it taught the eighth-grader how words can make a difference, just as they had in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," a rallying cry for the civil rights movement.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • * South Carolina