Meet the Candidates for Upper South Carolina

Visit the Search Committee's web page to see their smiling faces and read their bios.

The Very Reverend John B. Burwell
Rector, Church of the Holy Cross
Sullivan's Island, Daniel Island
and I'on, South Carolina

The Reverend Canon Dr. Neal O. Michell
Canon to the Ordinary,
Episcopal Diocese of Dallas
Dallas, Texas

The Reverend David F. O. Thompson
Rector, St. Bartholomew's Church
North Augusta, South Carolina


The Reverend W. Andrew Waldo
Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church
Excelsior, Minnesota

The Reverend Jerre Stockton Williams, Jr.
St. Peter's Episcopal Church
Kerrville, Texas

Comments?

A Look at the Local Numbers

The 2008 numbers for the Episcopal church are being compiled and there has been some Internet chatter about why they have not been released.

Since we will be learning more about the finalists chosen to run for bishop of our diocese on Friday of this week, I present my estimate of what is going on attendance-wise in the Catawba Convocation of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina for the edification of the candidates. I decided to do this after reading a posting at Cranmer's Curate on his bishop's first 100 days. Julian Mann was writing about his area in the Diocese of Sheffield, England,

"...this inner urban area covering six parishes with eight churches. Church attendance figures rank this 70,000-population area as among the lowest in the UK and parts of it are ranked very high on the government’s indices of social deprivation.

The average Sunday attendance in the eight churches is approximately 300, equivalent to less than 0.5 per cent of the population. With other Christian denominations included, the churchgoing proportion is around one per cent."

As far as our part of South Carolina goes, the following numbers were gleaned from my reading of the church research graphs available in the "Study Your Congregation" page provided by TEC. These are my own approximations because the data was presented in grapghic form. I also apologize for any formatting problems (a blogger issue).

-------------------------2008 Approximations------------

------------------------- Weekly Attendance__Members

Christ Church Lancaster______48_______________101

Good Shepherd York________125_______________215

Our Saviour Rock Hill_______170_______________690

St Marks Chester___________10________________25

St. Matthias Rock Hill_______32________________70

St. Paul's Fort Mill__________90_______________295

St. Peters Great Falls________16________________25


Totals_________________491_______________1421

To put this in perspective, here is the population of Chester, Lancaster, and York counties, the counties in which the above listed churches are located.

Chester County US Census Estimates 32,618

Lancaster County US Census Estimates 75,913

York County US Census Estimates 217,448

Total Population: 325,979

% of population attending weekly service in Episcopal churches: 0.15%

All this following something Bishop Henderson called "The Decade of Evangelism."

When anybody says anything to you about "mission and outreach," think about the 325,490 people locally who are not listening to the Episcopal church's version of the Gospel. Shouldn't they be coming in droves to hear the new thang, or are they smarter than the average Episcopalian?

What Gospel will our next bishop proclaim?

Dispossessed

The sermon at ECOOS today was delivered by Mary Cat who used today's reading, Mark 10:17-31 as her source.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money* to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

I think she did a good job handling this lesson, although the last sentence,
"For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible," should have been expounded upon.

Of all the disputes in the Episcopal church, the hardest for me to get my mind around has got to be the pursuit of litigation, church vs church, Diocese vs congregation, 815 vs Diocese. All the legal arguments aside, the fight over possessions is something which if it does not narrow the eye of the needle, it must certainly tie people up in such a knot that neither party will ever pass through that eye.

While I can fully appreciate the injustice of having an apostate national "church" lay claim to church properties through the ruse of the unilaterally adopted Dennis canon, sham "rump" Dioceses, appointed "bishops," and a $4,000,000 litigation fund set aside in 815's triennial budget, our Lord makes clear that these possessions may actually be encumbrances to whomever lays claim to them. Indeed, the process of making a claim goes against the spirit of today's lesson. Now, I risk getting into the arguments for and against fighting for what is rightfully yours versus "walking away." I have read strong opinions on the matter, and again, I reiterate, the risk in fighting these things out in court is that the eye of the needle might close itself shut. The alternative, walking away from the church of your fathers will cause shock and grief at first, but if it is done for the love of the Lord, the newness of life such a Church will have in the Lord must be an unimaginable thing. Walking away, by the way applies to either side in these disputes.

As the legal battles continue, grieve over the loss of the Episcopal church you thought of as your own. It is gone, but it was merely a possession, an encumbrance. Instead, gladly follow the Lord with the rest of His dispossessed.

The Great Deception (A.K.A., BCP 1979)

I was reading in the September/October issue of "Mandate" (see page 9), a publication of the Prayer Book Society, a piece that discussed "How Episcopalians Were Deceived" by Francis W. Read who quotes extensively from Dean Urban T. Holmes of the School of Theology of the University of the South who Francis Read says boasts of how through "silence, crafty evasions, and ambiguous rhetoric" the goals of advancing liberal theology through the prayer book revisions of the 1970's were achieved.

Choice quotes:

“The 1960s was a time when theologians became aware of the bankruptcy of so-called "classical theology." As Hans Urs von Balthasar stated, we discovered that "man has attained a new stage of his religious consciousness."

At least he didn't say a higher stage, but that quotation sets the stage for Holmes' actions.

Failure of the SLC to obtain sanction of the bishops to a radical theological change occurred in 1970, when Prayer Book Studies XVIII was issued. Holmes says:

“Its recommendations were more than the bishops of the Episcopal Church could fathom. They had been out of the seminary too long and were too threatened; so it never came to be. Here was an educational failure."

I guess those old bishops had not attained Holmes' stage.

But how the revisers got around the objections of the bishops is subsequently told:

“The subcommittee on Christian initiation and the SLC knew that the old understanding of Confirmation was theologically, historically, and psychologically untenable."

Now that is a bold statement. I love that "pyschologically untenable" bit.

"With a passion that we could only interpret as the result of a deeply invested role image, a number of bishops defended the old understanding of Confirmation. It became clear that we did not have the means to educate the bishops on this matter; so the alternative was to make the Confirmation rite as ambiguous as possible in the hope that eventually greater theological clarity would emerge and the rite would be an appropriate expression of that new clarity and a source - not a resource - for understanding the meaning of the sacrament."

A startling admission! Note to self, go back and recheck that Confirmation rite.

What the revision really does, Holmes tells in these words:

“For those of us that believe that the theological emphases of the 1979 book are appropriate for people in the late 20th and early 21st centuries this is a splendid opportunity. It is why we do not see the choice between 1928 and 1979 as a matter of taste. It is more a question of truth for our time. Two standard Books of Common Prayer would be theologically naive, to put it kindly. The task that lies before us is to show how in fact lex orandi is lex credendi and to rewrite our theology books in the light of our liturgy."

WOW, what a stroke of diabolical genius, and to think this comes straight from the School of Theology of the University of the South!

But the fact that a theological revolution was taking place under the smoke screen of liturgical revision was carefully concealed from the Church at large. During the time most of the events described by Holmes were taking place, the present writer, as an Associate Editor of the American Church News (predecessor of the New Oxford Review), repeatedly called for a resolution similar to the one that authorized the 1928 revision, declaring that no proposal involving a change in doctrine be presented or considered. These insistent demands were simply ignored by the SLC when plain honesty demanded that the avowed intentions of theological change be known. This duplicity is admitted by Holmes to have misled the Church, for he justified the failure to respond to the challenge of the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer (SPBCP) in these words:

“They were correct when they said, as they did repeatedly and sometimes abrasively, that the theologies of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and STU (Services for Trial Use. i.e., what was to become the 1979 book) were different. The SLC probably was strategically wise in not affirming this too loudly, but its members knew that the SPBCP was correct. There is a clear theological change." (emphasis added.)

That doesn't mean the theology is right!

He further admits the duplicity of the SLC:

“It is evident that Episcopalians as a whole are not clear about what has happened. The renewal movement in the 1970s, apart from the liturgical renewal, often reflects a nostalgia for a classical theology which many theologians know has not been viable for almost 200 years. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a product of a corporate, differentiated theological mind, which is not totally congruent with many of the inherited formularies of the last few centuries. This reality must soon ‘come home to roost’ in one way or another."

Cluck, cluck, it sure has.

The result is what he calls a "fundamental rift in the Episcopal Church."

He demonstrates beyond any possible rebuttal how the Episcopal Church was "sold a bill of goods" in getting General Convention to approve the new book as a mere updating of its liturgy, only to find that it now had a new theology. Is it any wonder that there are so many disaffected, disenchanted, and disaffiliated Episcopalians?

As the powers that be at 815 study the steady decline of the Episcopal church since the promulgation of BCP 1979 (a drop of about 2 million souls), will we hear any voices calling for a return of the old theology? I think not. Instead, look forward to more "modernization" by the next generation of conniving revisionists who, no doubt, will take up the cry that the church needs a new prayer book to keep pace with theology (a theology which they haven't fully worked out), while they silently plan to create a new theology through a new liturgy.

Divorce Episcopalian Style

The last time we heard a sermon from our rector supporting easy divorce was back on 07/13/2008 and the argument went like this, "People were never meant to stay married for 60 years." Today we had another chance to hear about the subject as Mark 10:2-16 showed up in the lectionary.

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’

If those words disturb you, don't worry, they don't apply anymore because "we" know better.

In his sermon today, the rector noted that the greater portion (those African churches) of the Anglican Communion follow a literal interpretation of this reading, an interpretation that neither he nor the Episcopal church holds. He used the first half of his sermon in an attempt to support the current doctrines of free and easy divorce and remarriage in the Episcopal church U.S.A. The usual arguments were covered with a couple of surprises tossed out for good measure. It was a surprise when he tried to justify the liberalization of divorce and remarriage in the ranks of the clergy. (No mention of 1 Timothy 3. I guess nobody believes that anymore). Then he pitched in an argument that the multiplicity of grounds for divorce that developed over time were a big problem and they eventually led to the justification of divorce for anyone on the grounds of "mutual incompatibility." Talk about an opportunity to discuss the dangers of incrementalism. No mention of the increased ease of secular divorce and the Church's response, which in the case of the Episcopal church was not to just roll over and play dead, but to join the game with flapping jowls and wagging tails.



And does anyone recall how close the Episcopal church came to having a "Liturgy of Divorce?" Oh yes, it was unofficial and was aborted from the Episcopal News Service web pages after it was discovered and exposed by bloggers, but who can forget that it,

"aimed to 'witness and bless the separation of this man and this woman.' It contained an 'undoing of the vows' by the couple..."

Our rector then turned to the tried and true arguments of domestic violence, mercy, and justice as justification to ignore the words of the Lord. A surprise came when the rector admitted that "experience" was an important guiding force leading to our current liberal teachings. I am afraid that "experience" is all you have to go by when you toss out Holy Scripture.

Can "experience" lead to salvation?

I will say one thing for him, and that he is honest about himself when he said that he thinks that "some scriptural verses have to be set aside" and he includes Mark 10:2-16 among them. This was no surprise to me, but I just wonder what the guests who were present for today's infant baptism thought. I also wonder how the second half of the sermon, during which he lauded long term marriages and contained some good thoughts, tied in with the first 10 minutes. It left me wondering just what part of the Gospel was this sermon based upon if the rector "set aside" the scripture itself. I guess it was just another sermon based on "experience."

I also wonder what those baptismal vows meant,

Question Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your
Savior?
Answer I do.

Question Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Answer I do.


Question Do you promise to follow and obey him as your
Lord?
Answer I do.

Does that mean I promised to obey only the easy words and reason away the inconvenient ones?

Why Didn't We Think of That?

Trolling through the Internet, I was led to the web pages of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana. (September 29 is the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels -see North Woods Anglican for a discussion of that.) The folks down in Lake Charles have a Fall Educational series going on and are posting the class notes on-line. The Christian Education page can be accessed by clicking here. They are studying the 39 Articles of Religion and if you start now you will only be 2 weeks behind because they have only posted the first 2 weeks of notes. Here is a teaser from week 2,

"Of the Justification of Man

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

Reformation Background

At the time of King Henry VIII’s death in 1547, the English Reformation was focusing on three things: Holy Scripture as God’s Rule of Faith, Original sin and the results of sin, and the Salvation of mankind through justification. In so far as the church in England needed to differentiate itself from the teaching of Rome, English thinking on justification mostly urgently needed clarification.

Expressed simply the righteousness we receive by way of justification owes nothing to human effort or human works. Justification is God’s work about us as opposed to God’s later work within us, how as persons we stand in God’s sight. It has to do with how God reckons or counts us as righteous, how God takes the merit and righteousness of Christ’s death and imputes that righteousness to us. Our justification is completed by reason of Christ’s death alone. Justification neither grows nor increases beyond this fact."

As Wednesday p.m. family services at ECOOS are but a dim receding memory, it might be good to take a virtual class at St. Michael and All Angels this fall. Let us hope that they continue to update the class notes.

Who is Against Us?

Today at ECOOS, our new Deacon delivered the sermon and focused on verse 40 from the lectionary reading Mark 9:38-50. "Whoever is not against us is for us." Curiously, He studiously avoided the parts of the Gospel that talked about auto-amputation of offending body parts, and focused instead on things that keep people together.

Drawing from a recent personal visit to the hospital, and describing the diverse people he encountered in the Emergency Department during his long wait, he noted how many were praying to Jesus. On reflection, I realize that he was also drawing upon the lesson from James. (Go ahead Deacon, quote the verses!)

"Are any among you suffering? They should pray." James 5:13-20.

He also noted a happy toddler in the E.R.

"Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise." James 5:13-20

All those people in the Emergency Room were brought together due to not just illness, but prayer to God.

Today's sermon should be a reminder to us all that we tend to go about our lives thinking that we are in charge. Time and time again our Lord reminds us in His Holy scriptures that we are not in control, He is Lord of all.
Why do we wait for times of stress or illness to our senses and pray for help?

I had a personal experience in the early morning hours today where the Lord said to me, "Okay, you don't like the bumps along My road, and you want to be in charge, fine. I'm outta here!" The resulting feeling of emptiness had me praying for His return, which came amazingly quickly. I know that I should be giving my self to Him during every minute of every day of the secular work week, but it is so very hard to keep from falling into the trap of self-control.

Coming back to the reading from Mark, is it that controlling sinful part of me called "self" that I should amputate? Can I do it by myself as an auto-amputation? Common sense would be to call in a specialist, and in this case, I'd better ask for a referral to the Master Physician, the Lord of all.

And no wise cracks about whether or not the procedure will still be available after "Health Care Reform!"