"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:10-12)

• AAC Web site Redesign to Launch Monday
• AAC Statement on South Carolina Bishop-elect Consent Denial
• Top Episcopal Bishop Tosses S.C. Election
• House of Bishops Meeting Begins Today

AAC Web Site Redesign to Launch Monday

The AAC's much-anticipated Web site redesign is scheduled to go live by this coming Monday, March 19. The site's address will remain the same (www.americananglican.org) but will have a significantly different look and organization, which we believe you will find both more appealing and more helpful in navigating the AAC's resources.

As a note of caution, this Sunday night (Eastern Standard Time), the site will begin the process of being launched. Visiting our site between 9 p.m. EST Sunday, March 18 and 9 a.m. EST Monday, March 19 could result in your seeing overlapped designs between the old and new site. We appreciate your patience as this process takes place. If you have any questions, please email Jenny Abel at jabel@americananglican.org.

AAC Statement on the Denial of Consent for South Carolina Bishop-elect Mark Lawrence

AAC Press Release

March 16, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The American Anglican Council (AAC) received yesterday’s news that the Rev. Mark Lawrence has been denied consent to become the next bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina with grave disappointment and renewed concern for the U.S. Episcopal Church. According to a diocesan press release, Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church (TEC), declared the election “null and void” due to “canonical deficiencies” – namely, that some of the written permissions by standing committees were offered electronically – even though the number of standing committees giving consent would otherwise have been sufficient.
 
The AAC joins the president of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina, the Rev. J. Haden McCormick, in praying that “this tragic outcome will be a wake up call to both clergy and lay through out TEC as to the conditions in our church.”
 
Following an unprecedented attempt by liberal revisionist Episcopal leaders to block the consent process for Lawrence, the consent has been finally blocked not by too few consents, but because of technicalities in how the consents were provided.

This is outrageous that a duly-elected priest, who clearly meets the Scriptural standards for church leadership, not to mention has gone out of his way to assure the rest of TEC that he will keep his vows and will not take the diocese out of the church, has been blocked from serving for no other reason than his orthodox views,” said the Rev. Canon David Anderson, AAC president and CEO. “This demonstrates that, more than ever, many in TEC are not only unfriendly toward the faithful, but outright hostile, and desire to punish the orthodox in any way possible in order to push and keep them out of the church.”
 
The AAC noted the irony of the situation: While a man living in a same-sex union – which is in clear contradiction to biblical guidelines for church leaders – can be elected, confirmed and consecrated a bishop in one state, a man of high integrity who meets the strict demands of leaders as laid out in Scripture is denied consent in another. Furthermore, the action calls into question TEC’s explanation for Gene Robinson’s 2003 confirmation, which TEC leaders have consistently defended by stating their belief that each diocese in the Anglican Communion has a right to elect the leader appropriate for its own “local context.” If true, why did more standing committees not vote to consent to Lawrence’s election?
 
“The discrepancy is obvious even to the casual observer,” Canon Anderson said. “TEC says ‘all are welcome,’ but that is simply not true based on their actions toward those with whom they disagree. This particular situation exemplifies the fact that the Episcopal Church has really got things backward; they have basically, if you will, turned Scripture upside down on its head.”
 
The AAC offers its full support to the Diocese of South Carolina as it discerns its next step. We are reminded that Isaiah prophesied this day would come, when people will “call evil good and good evil” and “substitute darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). The AAC takes heart that the Anglican leaders around the world stand with us in defense of the Gospel, and that God Himself is faithful to guide and provide for those who trust in Him.

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Top Episcopal Bishop Tosses S.C. Election

Source: The Post and Courier (Charleston)
By Adam Parker
March 16, 2007

The Very Rev. Mark Lawrence needed at least 56 "yes" votes to be elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. He got 57.

But because some of those votes were electronically submitted, Presiding Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Thursday invalidated the election. Canon law doesn't allow e-mail votes.

So for now at least, Lawrence will not be relocating from California to the Lowcountry. The Right Rev. Edward Salmon Jr., who has served as bishop for 17 years and has announced his intention to retire, will continue as interim bishop until a new leader is consecrated.

To become bishop, Lawrence had to secure a majority of "consents" from members of the church's House of Bishops and from Episcopal standing committees nationwide. Votes had to be signed by a majority of standing committee members and postmarked by Monday.

Lawrence said his visits and consultations with Episcopalians in the Lowcountry left a deep mark.

"My heart has been knit with the good people there," he said.

And the election process may not be finished, he added.

"I'm not sure it's over," he said. "The ball is in the court of the diocese. If they desire that I stand for election once again, then we would look at that."

In four months of often acrimonious debate and "mud flinging," many people have learned a great deal, Lawrence said, and perhaps it would make sense to "play the second half."

"That will have to be prayed through," he said. "With God there's always hope. I live by that."

The election of Lawrence has been steeped in controversy from the beginning. He was one of three finalists chosen because of their orthodox views of Scripture, the Rev. M. Dow Sanderson, former president of the standing committee, said last year.

Since 2003, when the openly gay Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire, the church has struggled to reconcile a "broad tent" view held by the majority of adherents with a view held by a small faction of dissenters who oppose what they call the liberalization of the church in the U.S. The dissenters have sought to align with other parts of the global Anglican Communion, especially churches in Nigeria and Rwanda, which have been actively courting unhappy parishes and dioceses in the U.S. and Canada.

The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon of the South Carolina diocese called the razor-thin vote "very disturbing." For someone as well-qualified as Lawrence to encounter such resistance bodes ill for the future of the church, he said.

"This is about trust. What you have is a community where trust has broken down," Harmon said. "It's a real tragedy, because good people are being badly hurt."

In recent months, Lawrence had indicated a willingness to leave the Episcopal Church if it failed to repudiate its endorsement of gay marriage and ordination and embrace a more orthodox view of Scripture. He also wrote that Jefferts Schori would not be welcome at his consecration. These comments caused many in the church to express concern over the election, a concern that lingers and is reflected in the close results of the consent vote.

Last week, in a last-ditch effort to convince doubters, Lawrence wrote a letter to standing committee members affirming his intention to abide by canon law and remain part of the Episcopal Church. In the days that followed, several standing committees reversed their votes, according to the South Carolina diocese.

The 120-day consent period actually expired on Friday, but Carl Gredau, canon to the presiding bishop, and Episcopal Church Chancellor David Beers approved a three-day grace period, according to the Rev. Jan Nunley, a church spokeswoman. The extra time was granted to allow "the postal service to do its magic," she said.

Lionel Deimel, an Episcopal Church activist and board member of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, said the national church was "lenient to a fault" in its willingness to be flexible.

"Not since 1875, when the Rev. James De Koven was rejected as Bishop of Illinois, have diocesan standing committees prevented the consecration of a bishop in the Episcopal Church," Deimel wrote in a release. "The last bishop-elect to be rejected by the church's ruling body, the General Convention, was John Torok, in 1934."

Lawrence's failure to secure a majority of legitimate consents from standing committees means the diocese must schedule a new election, according to canon law. The election process could take months.

At a February conference in Tanzania, other members of the Anglican Communion set a Sept. 30 deadline for the Episcopal Church to repudiate its endorsement of same-sex unions and ordination of gay clergy.

House of Bishops Meeting Begins Today

Source: USA Today
By Cathy Lynn Grossman
March 14, 2007

"Episcopal Bishops Expected to Talk, Not Act"

When the 296 U.S. bishops of the Episcopal Church retreat this weekend for four days of reflection, their prayers may address questions that threaten to rip their church from its historic roots in the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Communion.

Conservative Anglicans in the USA and abroad demand that by Sept. 30, the Episcopal Church stop blessing same-sex unions, cease approving any actively gay bishops and adopt a view of the Bible as the literal authority for morality. They say homosexual behavior is "against Scripture," as proclaimed by a majority vote at the 1998 Lambeth Conference of all Anglican bishops.

"There's an ultimatum before the bishops," says the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the Diocese of South Carolina. Harmon reads this in the lengthy statement signed by the 38 primates, leaders of national and regional churches, including U.S. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, after they met in Tanzania in February.

But when the Episcopal House of Bishops meets Saturday through Wednesday at Camp Allen, Texas, for its annual spring retreat, "no definitive statement is expected, although they may have a business session," says the Rev. Jan Nunley, a spokeswoman for the Episcopal Church.

They may not vote on the issues until their regular September business meeting — if then. "It's not an ultimatum unless you think it is," Nunley says.

On the table are questions of theology and authority: "What actually is required? How far does (the Communion's) theological jurisdiction go?" Nunley says.

Developments since the Tanzania meeting:

•Several Episcopal bishops who approved the church's first and only openly gay bishop, the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, in 2003 rejected primates' demands in public letters. "Under no circumstance" would he support such moratoriums, wrote the Right Rev. John Bryson Chane, bishop of Washington, D.C.

•Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion, called for the U.S. church to clearly conform to the 1998 Lambeth teaching on homosexuality. But he has no enforcement power.

This week, clergy and lay leaders from the Diocese of Utah contradicted Williams in an open letter saying, in part, that Lambeth resolutions have no legislative or theological authority.

And a public letter from the Diocese of Wyoming questions whether the bishops alone can set policy without consulting the other half of the church's governing legislature, the House of Deputies, which includes clergy, deacons and laypeople.

Both houses meet every three years at a General Convention, where decisions are made for the church. Wyoming called for Jefferts Schori to reject the primates' "restrictive" demands and disruptive politics.

Harmon says, "If in the end, the Episcopal Church wants to play the autonomy card, they can, but the costs will be terribly high."

How high? Although the "consequences" in the maybe-an-ultimatum Sept. 30 deadline are not spelled out, continued membership in the worldwide communion is the core question.

Meanwhile, Nunley says, Jefferts Schori is telling the whole church, "Let's talk, let's wait. We'll see what happens."