Archbishop Steve Wood on where the ACNA has been, and where it’s headed
“Before he was elected as the third archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, Steve Wood was one of the earliest COVID-19 patients in the United States, placed on a ventilator for 10 days in March 2020.
Two years earlier, as bishop of the Carolinas and rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Wood watched as his church building was engulfed in a fire.
‘I wouldn’t trade any of those experiences for where I am right now, because God has been so extraordinarily gracious to me through every one of them,’ said Wood. …”
– Religion News Service speaks with ACNA Archbishop Steve Wood.
Photo: ACNA.
SC Supreme Court rules some breakaway churches must return properties to Episcopal Diocese
“The S.C. Supreme Court ruled some of the parishes that broke away from the Episcopal Church more than a decade ago must hand over their properties to the national church and its affiliated South Carolina diocese.
The court’s April 20 ruling orders 14 of 29 parishes that split from the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina to begin the legal process for handing over ownership of the properties to the Episcopal Church. …”
– From The Post and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina.
See also this Pastoral Letter from Bishop Chip Edgar of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina:
“The ruling raises many issues that will have to play out in the coming weeks before any actions are taken, so our first response must be to quiet our hearts before the Lord as we pray for grace to meet the days ahead. Some of our churches are relieved that the court ruled their property does indeed belong to them. Some are grieving deeply, as the courts ruling went the opposite direction.”
This has been a very long running dispute – and not all the websites linked in our archival posts are still active, but the post summaries will give some perspective.
Bishop Chip Edgar began as Bishop of the Diocese last month, succeeding Bishop Mark Lawrence who has been Bishop of the Diocese since 2008.
Update:
Lawyer AS Haley, The Anglican Curmudgeon, has posted what may be his last of many posts on the subject –
South Carolina Supreme Court Divides the Baby
His conclusion:
“There will be one final chapter to this desultory story once the federal courts dispose of the name and trademark claims, probably in ECUSA’s favor.
I shall not return here to comment; I am done with everything that involves the Episcopal Church. Let it reap what it has so assiduously sown.”
The Dennis Canon Dead in Texas
“With its denial of certiorari (review) this morning to two of the Episcopal Church in the USA’s (“ECUSA’s”) groups in Fort Worth, Texas, the United States Supreme Court has put to rest the multiple adverse claims made for the last twelve years against the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
All of those various claims, and the stages of their ups and downs, have been chronicled on this blog, which began just before the legal disputes emerged.
It is gratifying, therefore, to report that this blog has managed to outlive, along with (retired) Bishop Jack Iker and his faithful flock, the Machiavellian intrigues of the schemers at 815 Second Avenue to hound and intimidate them into surrender of their properties…
The success in Texas leaves just one long-standing ECUSA dispute still festering: its pursuit of Bishop Mark Lawrence and his Diocese of South Carolina.”
– Read it all at The Anglican Curmudgeon, the blog of Christian lawyer A. S. Haley.
And much earlier, on our website …
Diocese of Fort Worth: Living with litigation – Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker, September 2013.
“Living with litigation has become a way of life for us as members of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. For the past 4 ½ years, we have been under the cloud of a lawsuit brought against us by The Episcopal Church and its local supporters, seeking to deprive us of our buildings and assets.”
Also, most of these post are relevant to Fort Worth.
And on South Carolina, most of these posts are relevant.
Dr Kendall Harmon and Hell and the Episcopal church
The GAFCON media team have been posting interviews recorded at GAFCON 2018 in Jerusalem.
In this 5 minute clip, Dominic Steele speaks with Dr. Kandall Harmon, Canon Theologian for the Diocese of South Carolina, and the man behind the TitusONENine blog.
‘Secretary General of the Anglican Communion rebukes Nigerian primate for boycotting meeting’
“Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion has told Premier it is “sad” that the leader of Anglicans in Nigeria has decided to not attend a meeting called by The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby.
The meeting scheduled for next month in Canterbury is for the Primates from the 39 provinces.
But Most Rev Nicholas Okoh Primate of All Nigeria has refused to attend because of what he deems as a lack of progress on the issue of sexuality.
The last meeting of its kind was in January 2016 where there was much disagreement about the Church’s view on sexuality.
Archbishop Josiah disagrees with the primate’s stance.
He told Premier: “At their meeting in January 2016 the Primates agreed to walk together.
“The primate of Nigeria was present at that meeting. In effect, he is now reneging on this decision which is very sad. …”
– Report from Premier UK. Photo: Abps Justin Welby and Josiah Idowu-Fearon.
However, Archbishop Okoh’s reasons are much more serious: (emphasis added)
“The only difference between the present and 2008, when Gafcon was formed, is that we have a different Archbishop of Canterbury. Everything else is the same or worse.”
“I attended the Canterbury Primates Meeting held in January 2016 because I believed it might be possible to make a new start and change the pattern of repeated failure to preserve the integrity of Anglican faith and order. I was disappointed.
The Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Lusaka the following April neutered the Primates’ action to distance The Episcopal Church of the United States (TEC) from Communion decision making. TEC has not repented, and continues to take aggressive legal action against orthodox dioceses. For example, the congregations of the Diocese of San Joaquin are currently having to turn over their places of worship to TEC, which has no realistic plan for filling them with worshippers. At the same time, the Diocese of South Carolina is now facing the potential loss of many of its historic buildings.
My disappointment was shared by the other Global South Primates who gathered in Cairo last October and we concluded in our communiqué that the ‘Instruments of Communion’ (which include the Primates Meeting of course) are “unable to sustain the common life and unity of the Anglican Churches worldwide” and do actually help to undermine global mission.
The only difference between the present and 2008, when Gafcon was formed, is that we have a different Archbishop of Canterbury. Everything else is the same or worse. There is endless debate, the will of the orthodox Primates is frustrated and misrepresented, false teaching is not being corrected, and nothing is being done to halt orthodox Anglicans in North America (and maybe soon elsewhere) being stripped of the churches that have helped form their spiritual lives.
In these circumstances, I have concluded that attendance at Canterbury would be to give credibility to a pattern of behaviour which is allowing great damage to be done to global Anglican witness and unity. Our energies in the Church of Nigeria will be devoted to what is full of hope and promise for the future, not to the repetition of failure. …”
– Read all of his Pastoral Letter for September 2017.
“I have been ashamed of Episcopal leadership denying the Christian faith…”
On GAFCON: “It is therapy for our hubris to have those to whom we have sent missionaries, now seeing the need of mission to the United States, Canada, Europe and Britain in their headlong race to sever ties with the Christian faith.”
– Bishop C. Fitzsimons Allison, retired Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina, was interviewed on his 90th birthday for VirtueOnline.
For decades, Bishop Allison was a leading light in the battle for the Lordship of Christ in The Episcopal Church of the USA.
Cliff Barrows
“Cliff Barrows, the longtime music and program director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has died at age 93.
Barrows son, Bill Barrows, told WYFF News 4 that his father was suffering the complications associated with aging. He was in hospice care in Charlotte.
Family members said he died Tuesday…”
– News from WYFF Channel 4, in Greenville, South Carolina.
See also: Press release from The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
“Cliff Barrows, 93, of Marvin, N.C., music and program director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), passed away today at Carolinas Medical Center-Pineville, following a brief illness.
As longtime director of music programming, and later television and radio programming, for Billy Graham Crusades, Barrows traveled the world with Billy Graham since the first Crusade in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1947. Barrows hosted the weekly Hour of Decision radio program, heard around the world, for more than 60 years.
Barrows and Graham met in 1945 while Barrows was on his honeymoon. The two men soon formed the first team of what was to later become the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association…”
(Photo courtesy BillyGraham.org.)
ACNA Provincial Council 2016
Canon Phil Ashey sends this video report from the ACNA Provincial Council, currently meeting in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
Archbishop Welby, What will you do about it?
“I’m not fond of litigation. I take our witness to the world very seriously, and the damage to that witness from Christians suing each other is serious. And even though my former profession as a criminal prosecutor put me in the position of litigating daily in the courts, I would much prefer followers of Jesus Christ being able to follow 1 Corinthians 6 and work out their disagreements within the Church, through church or secular sponsored arbitration services and negotiated settlements.
I cannot, however, let the injustice pass that occurred in the oral arguments before the South Carolina Supreme Court, between the Diocese of South Carolina (Bishop Mark Lawrence) and The Episcopal Church (TEC.)…”
– The American Anglican Council’s Canon Phil Ashey is disturbed by the latest legal action in South Carolina, and wonders what the Archbishop of Canterbury will say to the TEC Presiding Bishop at the Primates’ gathering in January.
When ‘discernment’ leads to disaster
“The historic First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina, announced in May that it would declare itself be ‘open and welcoming’ to all people and that it would allow same-sex marriage and ordain openly homosexual ministers.
The move came after the church had undergone a ‘discernment’ process under the leadership of a ‘LGBT Discernment Team.’ That team brought a report to the church’s deacons, who then forwarded it to the congregation. The church then approved the statement by standing vote…
The lesson – once a church or denomination is untethered from the inerrancy of the Bible, there is no brake on the relativizing effects of cultural pressure.”
– Albert Mohler writes an important essay on the slide into liberalism of a historic US church.
Will the American Church be a new Smyrna?
“As Christians brace for official oppression in America, Jesus’ words to Smyrna offer a great hope. Primarily, Jesus declares his sovereignty over such tribulation.”
– Rick Phillips at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, writes this reflection at Reformation21.
A Church that sues itself?
“The highly litigious Episcopal Church in the United States of America (“ECUSA”) has settled a lawsuit with itself, according to a press release from its rump group (which cannot legally be called a “diocese”) in South Carolina.
Shall we run that one by our eyes again? ECUSA has settled a lawsuit which it brought against itself…”
– AS Haley (The Anglican Curmudgeon) looks at the latest legal twists and turns in The Episcopal Church.
Homosexuals in the Church: Keep Reading in Ephesians
“The progressive wing of evangelicalism seems to be ramping up its demand that Bible-believing churches accept homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle. An example is a recent video…”
– Rick Phillips, Senior Minister at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, writes to help Christians respond in a loving and Biblical way.
A Prayer for the afflicted saints of Iraq
Rick Phillips, Senior Minister at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, has written a prayer you could use or adapt. And you will be helped by checking the Bible references he gives too. At Reformation21.
Archbishop Wabukala defends GAFCON
On Tuesday night, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Chairman of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans spoke at The Ridley Institute in South Carolina.
He spoke on “In Defense of GAFCON” with reference to The Thirty Nine Articles.
His address deserves wide distribution and is most encouraging. Archbishop Wabukala’s address begins 16 minutes into the video recording. (The address runs for about 45 minutes, followed by the question time which begins, after a break, at 1 hour 15 minutes into the recording. Also worth watching.)
Update: The text of his address is now available (PDF) on the GAFCON website as well as at The Ridley Institute.
Here’s a quote:
“I am so thankful to God that Christianity as moralism was not, on the whole, the gospel brought from England and the West to Africa and what we now call the Global South during the great missionary initiatives of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the GAFCON movement coined the phrase ‘Confessing Anglicans,’ Provinces like mine which are the fruit of missionary endeavors have always been ‘confessing.’ For many of us the writings of John Stott and J.I. Packer simply were normal Anglicanism and too many of us assumed that the rest of the Communion thought the same way!
However, in the past thirty years it has become clear that the West has finally exhausted the capital of its Christian heritage. The combination of secularization and the growth of global media and communications has laid bare a fundamental theological divergence between Western secularized moralistic Anglicanism and confessional Anglicanism. The resulting strains have seriously damaged the Communion — many faithful orthodox Anglicans have been marginalized or even ejected from the formal structures of their Churches. Sexual immorality has not only been tolerated but held out to be holy and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other formal instruments of Communion are no longer able to fulfill their basic purpose of gathering the Communion. …”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…