On Scripture and Tradition: Guest Post from Phil Anderas

Phil is a friend and brother in Christ serving Christ and the people of St Michael’s ACNA in the arctic tundra of southeastern Wisconsin.  He is a doctoral candidate in Lutheran studies at Marquette University.  His zeal, knowledge, and thoughtfulness not only on the Gospel and the Scriptures, but on historical Anglicanism have been a real encouragement to me.  I hope you enjoy!

 

“A High Reformation Principle for Sorting Out Vexed Issues in the Church Today”

by Phil Anderas +

Confessing Anglicans today are divided on the question of whether women’s ordination is in accord with the teaching of Scripture and consistent with the doctrinal heritage of the Church. On the one hand, there is great exegetical disagreement regarding the status of women in pastoral ministry in the New Testament itself. That, certainly, is the really decisive question for a Church committed to the authority of Holy Scripture. On the other hand, there is disagreement about how the Church should relate exegetical findings to the received traditions those findings sometimes challenge. This second problem is more subtle, and less frequently addressed today. But the question itself is an old one. The Reformers had to face it head on. And they did. In this short essay, I explain the practical principle that Martin Luther formulated as a solution to this problem, in hope that it will help confessing Anglicans faithfully navigate the theological challenges we face today.

 

Quick aside to those Anglicans who aren’t keen on brother Martin: while I learned this principle from Luther’s 1539 treatise On the Councils and the Church, Luther is the first to admit that the principle isn’t his own invention. In substance, he borrowed it from Augustine. And the great Reformers to the south and to the west of Wittenberg—including the Reformers of England—borrowed it too, either directly from Luther or Augustine or often enough, from both. Hence John Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto (also 1539) and John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England (1562) do not differ substantively from Luther’s On the Councils and the Church in the articulation and application of this principle. Indeed, in their attempted adherence to it, a real consensus amongst the magisterial, high-church, or conserving wing of the Reformation comes to the fore. Not, to be sure, that the principle was entirely irenic in either its formulation or its effects: for this consensus differentiates the Lutheran, Reformed, and English Reformation—conserving Reformers, all—from the papal traditionalism of the Church of Rome on the right hand as well as from the radical or Anabaptist application of sola scriptura on the left.

 

But back to the matter at hand. The practical principle can be summed up easily enough: a conserving Reformer assumes the basic trustworthiness of the tradition he has received. Even so, he tests everything he receives in the clear light of Holy Scripture. In the event of a manifest contradiction, he rejects tradition and holds fast to Scripture. But if the received tradition is either supported by Scripture, or is at least not contradicted by Scripture, it is retained. So there are three steps:

Who Are We? Iain’s May Newsletter

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

1 Peter 2:9

“So, what are we now?”  I have been asked this question countless times in 2013.  Of course, by now, though I’m not quite sure how to answer it, I at least know what the question means.  It means, “Are we Episcopal?  Are we Anglican?  If so, what kind of Anglican are we?”  What lies behind that question, however, is more varied.

For some, it is simple curiosity.  They love being a part of Trinity, and the broader association of our church is less important to them.  For others, it comes out of a place of grief.  Our entire spiritual and religious life has been formed in The Episcopal Church.  We feel a bit like people without a country.  For still others, we are finding it hard to invite people when we don’t know who we are.  As varied as these concerns are, they stem from the same root.  Identity.

I think few of us really give the issue of our identity its due attention.  Who we think we are sets the course for our lives.  When people never get a secure sense of who they are, they can spend their lives in an aimless kind of wandering, never really knowing where they fit in.

Our identity begins forming early in life, and continues to do so based on who we are, what we do, where we live, what we like, etc.  I have a cousin who years ago dropped out of college despite the fact that he had walked onto the football field and was making decent grades.  When another family member asked him why he said, “You and me, we’re just not the kind of people who go to college.”  Despite having the ability and talent to succeed in college, his identity was wrong.  That’s why that question “So, what are we now?” is so important to answer well.

In his epistle to the churches, the apostle Peter addresses the identity of the church.  He tells them, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [Christ’s] own possession.”  Who are we?  Peter says we are a chosen, royal, and holy possession of the Lord Jesus Christ.  He says we are a race of people formed into a nation of priests who live in the service of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Who are we?  We are Christ’s.  We are His treasured possession.  We are honored dignitaries in His service.  Before we are Smiths, or Jacksons, or Petersons, or Americans, or black, or white, we are Christ’s.

Having our identity in Christ makes all the difference.  When we understand that we are Christ’s, then we understand that we are not our own.  We were purchased at a heavy cost.  We are not a people who stand on our own merits, but we are a redeemed people.  We are not failures, rejects, or victims, but beloved adopted children, “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.”(Romans 8:17)  We are not individuals, but we belong to the body of faithful people throughout the ages, those who have lived by faith, not by sight.  We have a family joined together not with blood of genetic heritage, but by the shed blood of Christ.

Because this issue of our identity is so important, I’ve invited our Bishop to address just that at a luncheon forum following our 11 o’clock service.  Bishop Mark Lawrence will be addressing the question “Who are we?”  in a presentation followed by a brief time of Q&A.  But remember, no matter who we are, no matter what we call ourselves, no matter who we are related to, our identity is first and last in the Lord Jesus Christ.

To the Dregs

A mortal man spending eternity in hell, being mortal and therefore finite, will still not have endured all of its torments. Christ however, being eternal God, drank to the dregs the justice of divine wrath. The result being that the torments He endured on the cross on our behalf were infinitely more severe than all the torments of all the damned combined. In order to free us from the penalty of our sins Christ suffered infinitely on the cross.

Where was God today?

Where was God today?  How many people have asked that question through the ages?  From young parents losing a child, to victims of the horrors of war, to young teenagers having their hearts broken for the first time, almost all of us have wondered where God was when the pain came.  When Jesus hung on the cross, His detractors asked similar questions, “He saved others, let Him save Himself,” they said, “If you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross.”  Jesus’ only response, if it can be considered a response, came as He quoted psalm 22 before His death, “Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani!”  Translated “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me!”  The crowds who heard him misheard his words and thought he was calling for Elijah (Eloi and Elijah being pronounced similarly enough in Aramaic that when a crucified man screamed them they could be confused).  Thinking that he was calling for Elijah they gave Jesus one last chance, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take Him down.”  While they may have misheard Jesus’ words, they misinterpreted what was happening on the cross.  They thought the only evidence of God’s action in the crucifixion would have been if Jesus was taken down from the cross.

Likewise we only see God’s hand when he takes us down from our little crosses.  When He spares our child, gives us the grade, provides for our budget, or heals our disease.  In 2 Cor 5:19, Paul says “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them.”  What Paul is saying is that God was not less present in Jesus’ abandonment on the cross, but by leaving Jesus on the cross to the death, He was more present and more active than at any time in history.  God was there, in the abandoned Christ, working redemption and forgiveness.  Where was God on Good Friday?  He was in not only in heaven, judging our sins in the man Christ Jesus, but He was in Christ, atoning for us through His sinless life and death.  He was there at the cross glorifying Himself more than He has in any healing, military victory, or miraculous delivery.  The God we worship is not only present when we are delivered and relieved, but He is ever so much more present through our suffering and pain, working a redemption better than we ever could have hoped for.  

An acceptance of extreme suffering and of agonising death

“No man’s sufferings ever have been, or ever can be, as voluntary as were the sufferings of Christ… It is the divinity of Christ that tests his human heroism on a pinnacle beyond the reach of any rivals in heroic martyrdom… He only had complete and absolute power to save himself all through his Passion, and all through it at every second he actively refused to do so. This magnified beyond conception the intensity of his ordeal. The crucifixion is the unique example of an entirely and totally voluntary acceptance of extreme suffering and of agonising death in the presence of total ability to escape them at any moment.”

K.C. Thompson, Once For All quoted in Michael Green, The Empty Cross of Jesus.

Misquoting Scholarship: Bart Ehrman’s Quest to Undermine Christian Faith

I ran into an old friend from my college days at a conference several years ago.  When I asked him how his new campus ministry was going, this was his response.  “Iain, pray for us.  We’re dealing with a real enemy of the Gospel on our campus.”  Who was he talking about?  He was talking about Bart Ehrman, the distinguished professor of religion at UNC Chapel Hill.  At the time I thought, “is it really fair to call an academic honestly teaching what he believes to be true an enemy of the Gospel?”  However, after reading up on it a bit more over the years, I’m not so sure Ehrman is simply an academic honestly putting forth his views.  Rather, as I read Ehrman I experience someone with a very strongly held agenda who puts that agenda forth as if it were the only possible conclusion a rational human being could make.  Ehrman consistently concludes that orthodox Christianity is an invention of the later church.  However, in putting this view forth, Ehrman is habitually misleading in his depiction of the scholarly world.

In many of his books, Jesus Interrupted, Misquoting Jesus, etc, Ehrman makes many claims that undermine the historical understanding of Christianity.  He claims that the bible is fraught with contradictions that destroy its credibility for any type of orthodox Christian faith.  According to Ehrman, the doctrine of Jesus divinity was created by the later church, but is absent from Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospel accounts.  He asserts that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion are woefully irreconcilable, such that all we can really be certain of is that Jesus was crucified.  He holds forth the idea that New Testament authors were liars masquerading as apostolic writers.  Morover, Ehrman claims that there are dozens of other texts that never made it into the corpus of Scripture, because they didn’t pass one party’s view of early Christianity.  Rather, according to Bart, early Christianity held to an irreconcilable diversity in its claims about who Jesus was.  Of great certainty, according to Bart, is that neither Jesus nor his first followers claimed that he was divine, but rather this doctrine was invented by the church a generation after anyone had ever heard the voice of Jesus of Nazareth in person.  More than that, Ehrman makes the assertion that all real biblical scholars have known all of this for some time.

Ehrman’s views, of course, are fairly commonly held today by scholars and lay people alike.  Furthermore, many of the issues Ehrman takes up in the New Testament need to be dealt with, rather than being simply brushed away as many believers do.  However, Ehrman habitually talks about these issues as if his position is the only conclusion intellectually honest and rational people can come to.

For example, Ehrman calls the authors of the New Testament ‘liars.’  According to Ehrman, “Most scholars will tell you that whereas seven of the 13 letters that go under Paul’s name are his, the other six are not. Their authors merely claimed to be Paul.”  These writings are called pseudipigraphic, a term that Ehrman defines as “writing that is inscribed with a lie.”

At it’s best these claims are mere sensationalism.  As Ehrman well knows, the term pseudipigrapha refers to texts that are attributed to an author who didn’t actually write them.  For example, the most ancient documents of the book of Hebrews have no signature.  Older manuscripts attribute the work to Paul.  As Ehrman well knows, pseudipigraphic writing was common in the ancient world.  Authors often attributed their works to famous people to lend credence to their message.  Ehrman claims, however, that the motivation for these pseudipgiraphic writers was to deceive their audience.  (Ironically, this is indisputably the case for many of those works Ehrman claims were unfairly excluded from the New Testament Canon such as the Gospel of Thomas, The Acts of Peter, etc.).

Moreover, Ehrman’s claim that “most scholars” reject six of Paul’s thirteen letters is misleading.  It would be more accurate to say that there are six Pauline letters whose authenticity is questioned in the scholarly community.  This does not mean that most scholars question each of those six.  For example, the scholarly community is fairly equally divided over whether 2 Thessalonians is genuine or not.  In every case, there are well-respected scholars who uphold the authenticity of each of the Pauline Epistles.  The picture that Ehrman paints of a unified scholarly consensus is overly simplistic to the point of being disingenuous.

You see, it is not necessarily Ehrman’s claim that is misleading, but how he articulates it.  From reading Ehrman, you get the picture that only the most knuckle dragging of Neanderthals could possibly disagree with him.  “But scholars everywhere,” he writes, “except for our friends among the fundamentalists — will tell you that there is no way on God’s green earth that Peter wrote the book.”[1]  Elsewhere, he says, “Apart from the most rabid fundamentalists among us, nearly everyone admits that the Bible might contain errors.”(emphasis added)  What Ehrman fails to acknowledge in these ad hominem attacks is the amount of credible scholarship there is that disagrees with his own radical views.  In fact, Ehrman is a distinct minority in his own academic field of textual criticism, the study that seeks to recreate original ancient documents based on the surviving documents.  The vast majority of textual critics do not uphold Ehrman’s conspiracy theories that the New Testament was fabricated by the early church, but rather tend to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence in favor of the New Testament’s veracity.(For example, see Ehrman’s own mentor, Bruce Metzger.)

Is Ehrman, then, “an enemy of the Gospel?”  I don’t know.  What does seem clear is that Ehrman has an agenda to undermine biblical faith that he feels passionate enough about not to present the full story for critical minds to examine.  This agenda pops its head up consistently in his popular writings, teaching, and speaking engagements.  Of course, orthodox believers who uphold the truth of the Scriptures aren’t completely innocent of the same faults.  We often present only those facts that uphold our side of the story.  In more extreme camps of fundamentalism, the valid issues Ehrman brings up are dismissed as fringe elements rather than being respectfully discussed and debated.  The irony is that in his efforts to combat fundamentalism, Ehrman uses the exact same tactics dismissing valid scholarship that questions his own position.

For further reading, Ben Witherington has provided a more scholarly review of one of Ehrman’s books here.

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[1] Of course, the questions surrounding Petrine authorship of 2 Peter are much more universal than with the questioned Pauline letters.  However, what Ehrman doesn’t relate is that the first epistle bearing Peter’s name itself contains the signature of the scribe Silvanus, leading some scholars to conclude that Peter dictated the letter to an amanuensis.

How to Write a Worship Song in Five Minutes

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=GhYuA0Cz8ls&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGhYuA0Cz8ls

Mother Don’t You Love Me?

“When I was a little child, and had been troublesome to my mother–her reproof or punishment would often be followed by my trembling question, “Mother, don’t you love me?” And my mother’s reply invariably was, “Yes, I do love you; but I do not love your naughty ways!” Poor mother! Doubtless I tried her very much, and this was the best that grieved parental love could say. But our heavenly Father has sweeter, choicer words than these, for His erring children.

His love is Divine, so He says, “I have seen his ways–and will heal him!” O sweet pitifulness of our God! O inexplicable tenderness! O love surpassing all earth’s loveliest affection! Do not our hard hearts yield under the power of such compassion as this?

God knows all our wickedness, He has seen all our waywardness; yet His purpose towards us is one of healing and pardon–and not of anger and estrangement.”  Susannah Spurgeon

Myrtle Beach Congregations Grieve Split

Steve Jones has written this article for the Sun News.  I am grateful to him for allowing Trinity’s voice to be heard in part and to clear up some misconceptions that had been spreading in the last few weeks.  Overall, he has tried to listen to both sides of the story.

That being said, there are a few points I would like to address concerning this article.  First, there were a few inaccuracies.  The report that 300-400 members were not at the annual parish meeting where the vote was made is simply false.  There were somewhere near 150 members present out of a little less than 350 members.  Notice was sent out to each member via first class mail as well as multiple email reminders, announcements at services, and at least 5 public meetings beforehand where the annual parish meeting was announced as well.  Unfortunately, this level of attendance is fairly typical for this sort of meeting.  The idea that the rest of the church wasn’t there through some sort of malfeasance is simply false, and I would suspect the vast majority of those who disagreed with the vote would agree with that.  

Furthermore, there was no rigging of the vote.  Robert’s Rules of Order were followed diligently during the meeting with ample time for discussion from anyone who wished to speak up.  A motion could have come from the floor to table the discussion, which would have stopped the vote from happening.  No one chose to do so.  Furthermore, the idea that scores of vestry candidates were waiting to be nominated, but that they were restricted from doing so is almost comically inaccurate.  Just like every year I’ve been at Trinity, we had to scour the earth to find people willing to serve on vestry.  In fact, some of those nominated declined to serve.  I’m grateful that we were able to find a group of people who were not only willing, but excited to serve.  In my time as a priest, I have sat through several controversial votes both on the parish and diocesan level.  Every time, there are some people on the minority side who feel cheated and so they cry ‘foul’ regardless of whether any misdeeds were done.  I feel confident that the silent majority at Trinity feel the same way.

Also, while I am grateful to Mr Jones for giving Trinity a voice, I have to say that the article seemed a bit unbalanced.  It seemed as if only those who were left behind at St Stephen’s and only those who left Trinity were affected by this.  I have spoken to some of those who left St Stephen’s, and while they aren’t making any accusations against my former colleague Wilmot, they are hurt by his decision not to stand up to The Episcopal Church.  Wilmot is grieving because he’s lost people to whom he’s been a priest, but they are grieving because they feel like they’ve lost their priest.  I might add, that Trinity is feeling grief over the loss of those who have departed here.  It is not entirely fair to say that only those who are remaining loyal to TEC are grieving and feel hurt.  

Finally, I have to add that the description of the church in The Sun News is not one I recognize when I look at Trinity.  Trinity continues to be a place where the Gospel is working to change people’s lives.  It continues to be a community of love and care.  And it continues to be a community seeking to welcome people from all walks of life to taste and see the goodness of the one who loved them and gave Himself for them.  It is my sincere hope that we won’t lose sight of this in the midst of the cloud that seems to be hovering over us right now.  

Breaking: Diocese of South Carolina Petitions Courts “The Episcopal Church (TEC) has no right to the Diocese’s identity and property or that of its parishes”

January 4, 2013

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I write to you in this Christmas season to share some news. Today, parishes representing approximately 75 percent of baptized members in our Diocese joined in filing for a declarative judgment in a South Carolina Circuit Court against the Episcopal Church (TEC).  We are asking the court to declare that The Episcopal Church (TEC) has no right to the Diocese’s identity and property or that of its parishes.

We are saddened that we feel it necessary to ask a court to protect our property rights, but recent actions compelled us to take this action.  As you know, The Episcopal Church (TEC) has begun the effort to claim the Diocese of South Carolina’s identity by calling for a convention to identify new leadership for the diocese, creating a website using the Diocesan seal and producing material that invokes the name and identity of the Diocese of South Carolina.

Our suit asks the court to prevent TEC from infringing on the protected marks of the Diocese, including its seal and its historical names, and to prevent it from assuming the Diocese’s identity, which was established long before TEC was formed.  It also asks the court to protect our parish and Diocesan property, including church buildings and rectories, which our forefathers built and even shed blood over, and you have maintained without any investment of any kind from the national church.

The underlying point is that the Diocese disassociated from TEC in October 2012, after TEC attempted to remove me as your bishop.  The congregations, participating in the lawsuit, many of the Diocese’s largest and oldest, join many others in disassociating from TEC.

Read the rest here:

Some Reflections on Our Annual Meeting

On Monday December 3^rd, we polled the congregation regarding the recent split between The Diocese of South Carolina and The Episcopal Church.  This was not an easy vote for any of us.  I myself have been nurtured in all the rich diversity of worship of The Episcopal Church from the simple Rite I service in Summerall Chapel at The Citadel, to the High Church worship of St Paul’s in Monroe, NC where I was taught the heritage of The Episcopal Church and confirmed, to the contemporary worship of St Andrew’s in Mt Pleasant, the parish from which I went to seminary.  Yet in all these different settings, I could rely on the preaching and the worship to be grounded in the faith once delivered.  I have watched with sadness as that faith has been pushed more and more to the sidelines throughout The Episcopal Church.

Last week I had dinner with a parishioner who reminded me that a year and a half ago, I had predicted this chain of events, but he told me my timing was off.  I was hoping for 5 or 10 more years to get ready for this.  The Scriptures assure us, however, that God is sovereign and that He works all things for the good of those who love Him.  I have to remind myself of that frequently with the trials that currently face us.

From the time I came on as Rector, I have been working to be ready to respond should a split occur between the Diocese and the National Church.  My aim in this has been two-fold.  First, I have endeavored to make sure Trinity could make a choice unencumbered by threats, manipulation, or coercion.  I feel pleased with how well that has happened.  My second aim has been to keep Trinity together under the Gospel.  If Trinity is not together, our witness to the Gospel will be weakened.  If Trinity is not under the Gospel, our labor is in vain.  That is the task that now lies before us.

When I heard the count Monday night, I have to admit that my heart broke for those in the minority of this vote.  Having been an evangelical in The Episcopal Church I know what it’s like to hold a minority position.  I continue to hope that those who did not vote with the majority know that Trinity bears them no ill will, and they are welcome to continue to be a part of our church.  That being said, I know there are some who will not be able to follow us down this path.  While I understand and respect those decisions, I grieve over them.

I grieve as well at the damage done to the body of Christ.  Some will regard this move as schismatic.  I would gently remind you that what has happened at Trinity has not happened in a vacuum.  Neither have the affairs of The Diocese of South Carolina.  The pain felt from this is similar to the pain of divorce.  However, I would hold that Trinity did not vote for this divorce.  To carry the analogy, Trinity was put in a position much more like that of a child of divorcing parents.  We had the difficult and awkward choice to make about who we will now live with.  And while this move separated us from the less than 2 million Anglicans in The Episcopal Church, it has strengthened our ties with the 80 million Anglicans around the world.  Many will disagree with me, but I believe the diocese is more united with the body of Christ now than it was before.  Nevertheless, the fracturing that is taking place in the American church is still painful.

My thoughts turn now to the future of Trinity.  Certainly we face some difficult days in the future.  The posture that The Episcopal Church has taken towards departing parishes and dioceses has also been a source of grief.  I continue to pray, plan, and work to make sure that those forces do not disrupt the fellowship and mission of Trinity.

With all that there is to grieve over, we have more over which we can rejoice.  First is the Gospel.  The benefits of the Gospel can never be robbed from us.  I take great comfort in that as I wait to see if there will be any moves against Trinity from the steering committee being organized in South Carolina by the National Church.  As the Scottish Anglican pastor and hymn writer, Henry Lyte wrote

Let the world despise and leave me, they have left my Savior, too;
Human hearts and looks deceive me; Thou art not, like them, untrue.
And while Thou shalt smile upon me, God of wisdom, love and might,
Foes may hate and friends disown me, show Thy face and all is bright.

God has a habit of showing His face most brightly in our darkest hours.  And in that I rejoice.

I also rejoice that for the time being, Trinity no longer lives under an ecclesiastical structure that has not only forgotten the gospel, but has forgotten its central place in the life of the church.  Although we will need to continue to contend for this right, we no longer live under the threat of having faithful leaders removed for their commitment to the gospel.  Trinity does not have to worry about future generations not having the ability to choose a rector who is orthodox and biblical.  Trinity, and the other churches in The Diocese of South Carolina, no longer have to establish their identity by telling people what we are not, but can now do so by speaking positively of who we are.

I have long understood that anything worth doing is not easy.  As I look at the road ahead of us, I am excited even in the midst of my anxiety.  We have the opportunity now to begin to put ecclesiastical wranglings behind us and labor to win Myrtle Beach for the Gospel.  Part of the dysfunction in both the conservative and liberal wings of The Episcopal Church is that though we talk about each other, we do not talk to each other.  Part of the blessing of being Rector is that I do not have the ability to only speak with those who agree with me.  I would encourage you to take your frustrations, concerns, and wounds and speak directly with your brothers and sisters in Christ with whom you disagree.  The other option is that we huddle into likeminded groups of people who will agree with all of our thoughts and who will neither challenge nor be challenged by us.  If the process of healing is to begin, we must begin talking to one another.

Most importantly though, is that we let the Gospel do its work on us.  At the core of the Gospel message is that you and I were evil beyond our own ability to save ourselves.  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved!”(Eph 2:4-5)  God is not looking at Trinity and giving thanks that we are all so holy that we are able to save our church.  Paul goes on to tell us “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”(Eph 2:8-9)  As much as He rejoices when His children are faithful to Him, He does so knowing that His grace has preceded and enabled that same faithfulness.  As we move forward in this season of the life of our church, let us do so not boasting in our own righteousness but rather in the knowledge of how “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age (Titus 2:11-12).”

In Him,
Iain

Got something better to do April 8-10?

No you don’t, because The Gospel Coalition is hosting their annual conference in Orlando then.  I assure you nothing you could think of would be better than this.  Check it out…

Bishop Mark Lawrence Writes the Diocese of SC

Bishop Mark responds to the recent noncanonical actions by The Episcopal Church in South Carolina to reorganize a Diocese for the purpose of pursuing litigation against The Diocese of South Carolina and her parishes. 

Consumed by Litigation

Chris Seitz offers this insightful commentary on TEC’s actions so far in The Diocese of South Carolina.  Again, the problem isn’t that the Diocese is splitting up, its that TEC will not allow the process to happen peacefully.

“One need not speculate as to the purpose of the actions to confiscate the Diocese’s name and seal. TEC has already followed the same path in Fort Worth. Their objective is to assume the legal identity of the departed diocese and then attempt to register that identity with the federal trademark office in Washington. This requires as a prerequisite a demonstrated use of the trademarks by the party seeking to register them. But all of this is mere groundwork for a subsequent trademark infringement action in federal court in which TEC attempts to litigate highly disputed issues of church polity in the unrelated context of trademark law. TEC tried exactly this litigation tactic in Fort Worth to circumvent the state court where TEC itself had initially filed suit, but the tactic failed when Bishop Iker successfully moved the federal court to stay the litigation pending the adjudication of the controlling state law issues.”

You can read the rest here

Misuse of Diocesan Name and Seal

The Diocese of South Carolina has recently notified me that there have been illegitimate claims to diocesan titles and the diocesan seal by those reorganizing under The Episcopal Church.  As I have outlined in our parish town hall meetings (and will outline again this Thursday at 5:30 if you haven’t been able to make it so far), the people who wish to remain in The Episcopal Church and reorganize a diocese in South Carolina that is loyal to TEC have a choice to make.  They can either reconstitute as a diocese under TEC and allow The Diocese of South Carolina under Mark Lawrence to depart peacefully, or they can organize themselves for a legal battle to cause as much damage to the Diocese of South Carolina as possible on its way out.  Actions like this indicate that they are choosing the latter.  By using the diocesan name and seal as their own as well as by calling their own convention on the same date as our diocesan convention, the TEC loyal steering committee seems to be preparing itself for a fight to take away not only  property from the departing diocese, but also the claim to this diocese’ rich heritage.  This battle does not need to take place.  Mark Lawrence and the Diocese of South Carolina have done all in their power to make sure that those churches wishing to remain Episcopal have the right to do so.  The lawsuits and legal wrangling that promise to be coming down the pipe at this point are coming from one side of this fight only.  It is important to remember, if The Diocese of South Carolina has its way, parishes have the right to choose their affiliation.  If The Episcopal Church has its way, no one can leave without a fight.  Here’s the Diocesan statement:

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 do is assume our identity. 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 misleading communications, you can send a return email asking them to discontinue sending the 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/

Please keep the Diocese in your prayers as we gather for our Special Diocesan Convention this Saturday (November 17th @ St. Philip’s, Charleston).