Prayer, day 1768: In honor of Kamehameha IV and Emma, Rulers of Hawai'i

King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, remembered this day in our calendar of saints.

Blessed Jesus,

extend your arms of love around us,

that we remember we are your own.

May we rejoice in the fellowship of God,

and sing hallelujahs

with all of creation

for all your saving deeds, O Holy One. 

Send forth the Spirit

to fill us with zeal for service

and a thirst for wisdom, we pray.

Give us a reverence for the earth

and that dwells therein, O God,

for all are miraculous works

of your mighty hand. 

When we see a hand offered to us today, Lord Christ,

let us take it,

and rejoice in the common bonds

that unite us as your children. 

Cover those who are in need

with the mantle of your grace and mercy,

and grant to the departed eternal rest.

Most Merciful One,

we lift up these beloveds before You,

and ask your blessing upon them.

Amen.

1040

New Every Morning: Speaking to the Soul, March 29, 2017

Morning Prayer at dawn on the beach, Matanzas, Cuba, 2017.

Yesterday was a hard day. I went to bed exhausted, emotionally and physically spent, having presided at the funeral of a dear young man and neighbor, and right before bed being informed of the death of a long-time friend and mentor from my teaching days. But in my ten years’ journey toward ordination, one of the blessings that has sustained me and guided me has been the cultivation of a rule of life, a set of spiritual, mental, and physical practices that have helped shape my identity as a Christian, as well as as a pastor, deacon, and minister.

The grace of having a rule of life is that, after giving myself a few hours’ sleep, even while still a bit heart-sick and tired, I rose as I do every morning and prayed morning prayer. What a blessing to see that today is the feast day of John Keble, one of the leaders of a 19th century reform and revival movement in the Church of England known as the Oxford Movement, which, besides encouraging the recovery of practices and traditions that drew the Church of England back to its Catholic roots, inspired and shaped the spirituality of Christina Rosetti, the poet.

Keble, besides helping to launch the Oxford Movement, is himself one of the finest poets in the Anglican tradition, and wrote a book of poems entitled The Christian Year, which was intended to inspire devotion to the Prayer Book, that most Anglican collection of worship and theology. Each Sunday and holy day of the Church Year receives a poem, as well as holy days. At the beginning of this beautiful work, Keble wrote two poems, “Morning” and “Evening,” in reflecting on morning and evening prayer. Some of the stanzas from “Morning,” were used for hymn 10 in our hymnal, often used for morning prayer. So after I prayed morning prayer this morning, I listened again to these beautiful words, and let them seep into my heart:

New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life, and power, and thought.

New mercies, each returning day,
Hover around us while we pray;
New perils past, new sins forgiven,
New thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven.

If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes will lovelier be,
As more of Heaven in each we see:
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care.

The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love
Fit us for perfect Rest above;
And help us, this and every day, 
To live more nearly as we pray.

Even though the morning light has not yet broken through the shroud of night, nonetheless, the gift of a new day reminds me of the love that is our foundation through Christ our Savior—love that binds us together in one beautiful and mystical body. Even when sitting alone at my desk to pray my prayers in the morning, I am never alone. In every moment as I pray, others all over the world are praying too, and where two or three are gathered together in love, there is Christ also.

We are drawn upward into a great cloud of saints, whose witness to God can be found in something as profound as writing beautiful poetry or as mundane as helping a friend find something lost or placing a gentle hand in the hand of one awash in grief. The tide of love will always come in, and rosy-fingered dawn caresses our hearts, drawing our eyes and hearts upward as we prepare to walk through this day.

The Spirit tugs at my sleeve as I read these words, reminding me of the grace of God that upholds all of us, especially when weary, restless, or heart-sick. Heaven is all around us. This moment is a gift. The face of the Holy One is there before me, shining from all those I meet, beloved, whether friend or stranger. The Lord of Love embraces us in our despair and mourning as much as in our pleasure and rejoicing. This is the day that the Lord has made, and this is the Love that fills my heart and shines out even from where the brokenness is healing by grace and mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Help me this and every day to live more nearly as I pray.

(This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, March 29, 2017.)

Of Power, Covenants, and Love: Speaking to the Soul, January 19, 2016

Rainbow at Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite.

Sometimes, it seems, God taps us on the shoulder to awaken us, and the last few days have been no exception. Much of the Episcopal/Anglican world has been abuzz with what did (or did not) happen at the Primates’ Meeting last week. Yesterday, we remembered that great prophet and martyr, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are some common currents that run through those events and our reading today from Genesis in the daily office lectionary.  In all these things, there seems to be a thread related to power, covenant, and freedom that binds them together.

Today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures is from Genesis 9:1-17, which sets forth the promise of God to Noah at the end of the story of the flood. However, after I read it, I flipped back in my Bible and read the end of the creation account in Genesis 1:26-28. This is where in the biblical story we are first reminded that God created humans in God’s own image. Through establishing a covenant with us in creation, God showered humanity with gifts: our beautiful, fragile Earth, our only home; the breath of life itself; and most importantly, freedom, and the power that must accompany that freedom, if it is to mean anything at all.

The reading from Genesis 9 in the daily office lectionary today also speaks about freedom, power, and covenant, just as the story from Genesis 1, although with some differences:

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth….Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,“Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”—Genesis 9:1, 8-11

The language used as God speaks echoes with phrases from the Genesis 1 reading. Once again, humans are ordered to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” Once again, humans are given power over every living thing. However, there is an interesting difference in the covenant with Noah and his family: this is not a two-way covenant. It is actually a three-way covenant: between God, and Noah, and with creation itself as well. The voiceless are part of the covenant, and specifically acknowledged as being included. Dr. King also understood the importance of contract and covenant when, in his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he spoke of promises of inalienable, God-given rights made but NOT fulfilled, promises of freedom and justice for all, promises that rest upon that same freedom and love that is an intrinsic part of God’s relationship with creation.

In endowing humanity with power and freedom, God made possible a real relationship of love between God and humanity, for love must be freely given. Love that is coerced is actually the opposite of love—it’s domination and tyranny. God created human beings with free will—including the freedom to reject God and reject God’s intention for creation even as we simultaneously long for God, the Infinite One. In giving us free will, in seriously desiring relationship with us, God gave us power. Yet the greatest way to exercise that power is through love, as Dr. King reminded us again and again. This reminder is rooted in the concept of covenant. It is indeed ironic that our current situation in the Anglican Communion has to do with arguments about covenants. On the one hand, there are covenants that were never made--covenants that sought to deny and restrict the full personhood and acceptance of all of God’s people, male or female, of every race and sexual orientation or gender identity. Part of this latest argument is, ironically about another type of covenant: marriage. Marriage, too, just like the covenants in Genesis, is a covenant that is rooted in love and the proper use of power, that offers rights and privileges, yes, but is also based on both fulfilling and yet sometimes limiting our freedom—all in the name of love.

This point might cause us to go back and look at those stories of the covenants again. The stories we tell—and scripture falls within this field—are always stories about ourselves, or we do not find them very compelling, much less enduring. In telling this story in Genesis about ourselves, I wonder how different the story would have been if, instead of being stated as “dominion over” the rest of creation, we would instead have been able to see that God was calling us not to use but to love and care for every living thing that moves upon the Earth. Love, like power, only exists through the agency of freedom, but the difference is that love uses its freedom to limit itself in the interests of the object of love, the beloved. God loves humanity so much that God gave us freedom in the interest of making us understand our heritage as ones made in God’s image. That’s our potential. The tragedy of human history, however, is of using our freedom not for the glory and love of God but for the glory and love of ourselves. Too often our freedom is rooted in a failure to pour ourselves out in love to our God and our fellow creatures, as Jesus does on the cross.

We in the Episcopal Church have declared that we will stand with those who have been excluded from full participation in the rights enjoyed by others, which is why we remember and celebrate the life of Dr. King as a saint of God. Further, we stand with those who have been excluded throughout history from the full protection of the Church, whose full humanity has been denied based on fear and prejudice. Real, lasting love is sacred, and is a blessing that should be blessed by the Church, called as we are to embody the love of God in the world. As Christians, we are called to understand that the greatest power in the world is love, because it comes from God, and is the foundation for all covenants.

(This was originally posted at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 19, 2016.)

Prayer 1088

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1667

Precious Savior, let us be drawn into the embrace of your outstretched arms, that we may seek to embody your love in the world. 

Let us remember our many blessings, and give You thanks and praise for your immeasurable grace. Let us hear again your call to compassion and mercy, that we live out the wisdom of God in the world. 

Unite our hearts and minds in love, rooted in your truth, O Spirit of the Living God. Let us open our hearts, to renounce bitterness and rancor, and to ask forgiveness for sins and strength for renewal in faith. 

Holy One, cover us in your mantle of peace, and grant comfort and fortitude to those we now name.

Amen.

Fed in Spirit and Life: Speaking to the Soul, November 6, 2015

Portrait of Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, from the collection at Lambeth Palace.

Matthew 14:13-21

Where power and mercy are combined, there is God manifest; where we see righteousness or love, we see the character of God; where we see these triumphing, there we see God in action; where we see them achieve their purpose despite all calculable possibilities, there we acknowledge God signally self-revealed.—William Temple, Nature, Man, and God

Today is the day we remember the life of Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, who died in 1944 after a brief two years as the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was Archbishop of Canterbury during the depths of World War II, but although he did not live to see the end of that conflict, he had already begun advocating for a post-war society in which the Church advocated that power and mercy work to create a society in which the welfare of the people was paramount. Archbishop Temple’s leadership was inspirational at a time in which unimaginable evil had attempted to take the world by the throat, when power had been wedded instead to a culture of death and oppression. In the midst of this, William Temple spoke hope and possibility to a people engaged in one of the greatest struggles of the 20th century. He dared to believe in miracles and the power of God’s love even in a desolate place filled with cries of mourning.

I thought of Archbishop Temple’s life and work when reading the gospel for this morning. The gospel for today’s daily office readings is Matthew’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Our gospel story is also set in desolation and mourning. Jesus demonstrates power and mercy nearly from the outset. He had withdrawn to a desert place after learning of the death of John the Baptist, to be by himself for a while, to grieve. Yet the crowds followed him anyway. Rather than turn the crowds away, Jesus “had compassion on them and healed their sick.” Jesus, moved by mercy, used his power for healing among those who were so desperate that they were willing to go far off into a desert place on the chance that they could be healed. Power and mercy combined, and God was revealed indeed, especially to those whose life was restored to them. In a place of desolation, Jesus’s compassion makes people whole.

But Jesus was not finished. Recognizing the hunger of the crowd, Jesus has them sit down, and feeds a crowd of five thousand men and their families from five loaves and two fish. “Bring them to me,” Jesus says, and then he once again gives the crowd more than enough to satisfy their hunger. The echoes of this miracle resound every time we gather around the altar, God’s table, to give thanks through the Eucharist, just as Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and multiplied those loaves. Each time we gather around the altar, especially, the miraculous love of God is revealed to us just as it was to that crowd on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee, power and mercy combine to show us and recall to us the greatest force in the world: love.

Jesus continues to feed us, to recognize our needs and respond to us in love just he did to that crowd.  We are fed so that we can go into our lives after we depart from that altar, and carry the power and mercy of Christ into a world that is just as famished—and even more besides, perhaps—than that crowd was.  In Fellowship with God, Archbishop Temple remarked, “We know that our great need in our everyday discipleship— in office, or factory, or shop, or school, or in our own homes— is spirit and life; and we know that we have received these in the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Son of Man.“

 Let us sit down before Christ, and be fed by Him, and then, transformed by the power and mercy, the spirit and life, that draws us together before God, serve God this day, as William Temple and all the saints we sang about just last Sunday continue to try to do.

(This was first posted at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on November 6, 2015.)

John Vernon Taylor- A Prayer of Daily Dedication

Lord Jesus Christ,
alive and at large in the world,
help me to follow and find you there today,
in the places where I work,
    meet people,
    spend money,
    and make plans.
Take me as a disciple of your Kingdom,
to see through your own eyes,
and hear the questions you are asking,
to welcome all men with your trust and truth,
and to change the things that contradict God’s love,
by the power of the cross
and the freedom of your spirit. Amen. 

-- John Vernon Taylor

Holy.. um, you know.

There are so many wonderful people who are evangelical Christians in the world. Actually, I have trouble with the current understanding of that term. We should ALL be evangelical Christians, by which I mean that we should attempt to witness to the love of God through Christ and the movement of the Holy Spirit within all of our daily activities, being candles shining love into the darkness of a world that is all too starved for a spirit of compassion and Godliness. But, going back to my first sentence, there are so many people who self-identify as evangelical Christians.

And then there are the folks I am going to talk about for the next few minutes here below, whom I will referred to a Reactionaries, since from my judgment, they are neither "traditionalists" nor "fundamentalists" in the best sense of either of those words.

Here's the take of a writer for the Guardian on the latest weirdness coming out of JOE (Jolly Olde England, to the uninitiated). The Church of England continues to struggle with a small but rabid minority who oppose women's ordination. The latest manifestation of this disagreement is now over whether women should be ordained as bishops.

This week, the General Synod said yes... but.

A little history might be necessary, with appropriate links for later reading enjoyment. So, as we all know, when the Church of England decided to allow women priests back in 1992, it was far from a unanimous vote in the General Synod. Approximately 1000 priests threatened to break away and form a rival group. As late as 2000 (according to the same link from the BBC) it was still reported that half of England's clergy refused to take communion from a woman priest. Apparently, about 1,000 of the 13,000 parishes in England have registered that they do not wish to have female priests serve among them, and just over 300 parishes have asked for oversight from so-called "flying" bishops rather than remain over the authority of a bishop who will ordain women to the priesthood. Women are therefore far from being treated as equals in ministry in the CoE. It appears that the CoE is willing to continue to encourage this same idiocy in some vain hope that this will prevent further chauvinistic demands on the part of "evangelical" who seem to be holding the whip hand again in the Anglican Communion.

Then there is this appalling little tidbit which I found on the Episcopal Cafe. Here's the summary from Ekklesia:

A Church of England bishop [the Rt. Rev. Wallace Benn, Suffragan Bishop of Lewes] has recommended a booklet that supports the legalisation of rape within marriage and the criminalisation of same-sex relationships.

The booklet, by Stephen Green of Christian Voice, is called Britain in Sin. While it was written a few years back, Green’s revamped website now includes an endorsement of it by Wallace Benn, the Suffragan Bishop of Lewes.

It is sad but not surprising that Green’s band of fundamentalists should support policies of this sort. What is more alarming is that Benn should endorse them.

Britain in Sin argues that the UK has declined spiritually, morally and socially due to the abandonment of Christianity since the mid-twentieth century. In the booklet, Green lists government decisions which he regards as contrary to the Ten Commandments, beginning with the UK’s membership of the United Nations in 1945.

The booklet opposes a legal right to equal pay for men and women, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Green supports the death penalty and advocates an extremely right-wing approach to economics, with heavy cuts to the welfare state and the abolition of all inheritance tax. It implies that adultery should be a criminal offence.

Make sure you read the hyperlinked texts to get just a smidgeon of the horrible things that the author of this pamphlet, who is a noted alleged evangelical, supports. Now, that is bad enough, but apparently the Bishop of Lewes was quoted as endorsing this pamphlet on a website affiliated with its author. After an outcry, Bishop Benn has disavowed his support of this piece of garbage, claiming that he had not read the entire work. Just as a note, kiddies, make sure you read things you actually endorse, especially when written by reactionaries. Just sayin'.

On using the Bible as the basis for defintion of marriage

The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has had comments printed in the press warning the British government not to legalize gay marriage:

“Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” says Dr Sentamu. “I don’t think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is. It is set in tradition and history and you can’t just [change it] overnight, no matter how powerful you are."

First of all, marriage is not a private matter, nor is it purely a religious matter OR purely a civil matter.

Marriage is a matter of civil control as an issue of contract, as an issue of property, and as an issue of inheritance, just to name the basic universals regardless of what country in which one lives. Here in America, marriage is also vitally involved in sharing of health care benefits and power in health care directives, as well. That is why you MUST get a marriage license for a marriage to be valid, but you do NOT have to have a religious ceremony for a marriage to be valid. The religious ceremony is optional.

Now, here in America, we often blend the two facets of marriage together, which partially obscures the reality of the two separate facets of marriage. But in Europe that is not how the system works. Couples go to the City Hall and have the civil ceremony, and then have a religious ceremony if they so desire it.

There are a lot of lovely traditions associated with marriage. But most of them are not Biblically based, and thank God for that, because, particularly in the Old Testament, marriage is not an institution which I as a woman would have wanted any part of.  Examples of polygamy are rife throughout the Old Testament. Lamech, Abraham, Jacob, Esau, Saul, David and Solomon all had at least two wives and Solomon and David had many more. Deuteronomy 21:15-16 reminds men that they may not cheat their first-born son of his inheritance, even if he is the son of the less-favored wife. And then there was the issue of concubines. Lot's daughters got him drunk and had sons with him "to continue the inheritance." Granted, the refusal to practice monogamy almost always caused all kinds of trouble--think of Abraham and Hagar and then Sarah, or David and Bathsheba for something truly horrible from an ethical and moral standpoint. So to appeal to the Bible as a source of tradition and authority when dealing with the definition of marriage is to me completely reckless and ill-informed.

The fact is that the definition of marriage has never been set in stone. Most of us ignore St. Paul's advice that the best way to live is as a celibate-- although, he basically says between gritted teeth, get married if you must. Nice. Although brought up by a Christian mother, St. Augustine himself had a child with a woman who was not his wife before his reconversion experience. Throughout most of human history marriages usually lasted only a few years due to low life expectancies and high maternal death rates, in particular. It's hardly the modern era that invented step-mothers, step-siblings, half-siblings and so on. Think about classic fairy tales just as a starting point and you will realize that the so-called "nuclear family" is almost coterminous with the Nuclear Age.

Getting back to the consideration of gay marriage which initiated the interview with the Archbishop of York, the fact is that the word "marriage" connotes legal rights as well as religious significance. I used to believe that giving gay people all of the legal rights of marriage was sufficient, and so "civil partnerships" would be all that were required. I used to joke that I didn't believe gay people should have the right to marry, since they have already suffered so much (not intended as a slap at my husband, by the way, just letting my inner Henny Youngman out). And certainly, I guess civil partnerships are better by far than nothing.

But there is certainly something sacred to me about the religious concept of marriage, especially as someone who has been married for 23 years during all kinds of struggles as well as blessings throughout the course of that relationship. And how can I claim that God loves us all equally if I would also argue that God would deny any such a blessing? I would like to see MORE people dedicate themselves to the real commitment that marriage should signify-- including many people who already have the right to marry and yet fail to actually understand what marriage should mean in terms of their own behavior.

Some here in the US have argued that once gay people are given the right to marry, we would have to allow pedophiles to marry children (haven't noticed too much demand for that, but...) or practitioners of bestiality to marry animals. Ignoring the hateful aspect of remarks that lump faithful gay couples with such exploitative behavior, let me also point out that in those two examples, neither children nor animals are legally able to consent to intercourse nor to form contracts just as the most obvious refutation of this line of "reasoning." 

I would also think that anyone who is willing to make a commitment that promotes honor, fidelity, stability, selflessness, and devotion should be encouraged as a counterbalance to a flawed, fragmented society that usually glaringly not just lacks but denigrates these same honorable concepts.

Even in the Bible.

Interesting discussions for and against the Anglican Covenant

Interesting discussion at the Lead about the most current trends in the debate over an Anglican Covenant can be found here: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/anglican_covenant/antiamericanism_and_the_anglic.html

The text of the pamphlet by Peter Doll can be downloaded as a .pdf file here: http://deimel.org/commentary/b_pages/doll.pdf Be ready for some pretty bitter (but hardly original coming from our British cousins) invective of Americans as imperialist, arrogant, impatient, narcissistic boobs who have of course created this whole mess all by our little lonesomes.

And here is a rousing defense of we arrogant American Anglicans by one of our English brethren, the Rev. Jonathan Clatworthy, here: http://www.modernchurch.org.uk/resources/clatworthy/2012-1.htm His refutation of the parochialism and illogic of some of the arguments presented by Doll in his attack upon America are quite well done, and I highly commend it.

Other commentary can be found here and here. 

SC Bishop Lawrence-- I am reminded of President James Buchanan

Here's a bishop who makes it easy for parishes to secede from the Episcopal Church WITH their property. He says he can do nothing, but claims he has done nothing to abandon the Episcopal Church. And there's no disciple that can be applied? Reporter Mary Frances Sjonberg writes in the Episcopal New Service:

The Episcopal Church's Disciplinary Board for Bishops Nov. 28 said it cannot certify that Diocese of South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence has abandoned the communion of the church.

"Based on the information before it, the board was unable to make the conclusions essential to a certification that Bishop Lawrence had abandoned the communion of the church," the Rt. Rev. Dorsey F. Henderson Jr., board president, said in a statement e-mailed to Lawrence and reporters. (Henderson said he informed Lawrence of the board's conclusion by telephone as well.)

The board met Nov. 22 via conference call to consider information given it by a group of communicants in the diocese.

Under Title IV, Canon 16, a bishop is deemed to have abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church by an open renunciation of the doctrine, discipline or worship of the church; by formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the church; or by exercising episcopal acts in and for a religious body other than the church or another church in communion with the church.

"Applied strictly to the information under study, none of these three provisions was deemed applicable by a majority of the board," Henderson said in his statement.

In the Nov. 28 statement, Henderson said that the disciplinary board faced what he called a "basic question" of "whether actions by conventions of the Diocese of South Carolina, though they seem -- I repeat, seem -- to be pointing toward abandonment of the church and its discipline by the diocese, and even though supported by the bishop, constitute abandonment by the bishop."

"A majority of the members of the board was unable to conclude that they do," Henderson said.

Henderson, the retired bishop of Upper South Carolina, noted that it is "significant that Bishop Lawrence has repeatedly stated that he does not intend to lead the diocese out of the Episcopal Church -- that he only seeks a safe place within the church to live the Christian faith as that diocese perceives it."

"I speak for myself only at this point, that I presently take the bishop at his word, and hope that the safety he seeks for the apparent majority in his diocese within the larger church will become the model for safety -- a "safe place" -- for those under his episcopal care who do not agree with the actions of South Carolina's convention and/or his position on some of the issues of the church."

Lawrence told the diocese Oct. 5 that he was being investigated for abandonment. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the House of Bishops were not involved in making the claims, Henderson said at the time via a "fact sheet."

The package of documents alleging his abandonment of the church that Lawrence said he received Sept. 29 from Henderson, is posted here on the diocese's website. The documents contained 12 allegations of when Lawrence's "actions and inactions" sought to abandon the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church.

Those allegations cited five specific diocesan convention resolutions that Lawrence supported. In addition, the allegations also claimed that Lawrence has removed all references to the Episcopal Church from the diocesan website and noted that half of the congregations with working website have done the same or offer links to breakaway Anglican organizations.

"The bishop appears to have done nothing to stop other parishes which are outwardly moving in the direction of withdrawal" from the Episcopal Church, including parishes that have sought or obtained legal advice on those moves, allegation seven said.

Three allegations referenced comments made by Lawrence about what he calls the Episcopal Church's "false gospel of indiscriminate inclusivity" and his description of the church as a "comatose patient" that has slowed down Anglicanism in the 21st century.

It is also alleged that missions are being planted in the diocese but Lawrence has not recognized "a congregation of loyal Episcopalians" as a parish or mission.

The 12th allegation surrounded the circumstances of the ordination of Lawrence's son.

The diocesan leadership has engaged in a series of moves to distance itself from the Episcopal Church, ultimately stemming from disagreements over human sexuality issues and theological interpretation. In October 2009 the diocese authorized Lawrence and the Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from churchwide bodies that assent to "actions deemed contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them, the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference which have expressed the mind of the communion, the Book of Common Prayer and our Constitution and Canons, until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions."

That authorization came in response to two General Convention resolutions passed two months earlier that focused on human sexuality and reaffirmed the Episcopal Church's commitment to the Anglican Communion. Resolution D025 affirms "that God has called and may call" gay and lesbian people "to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church." Resolution C056 calls for the collection and development of theological resources for the blessing of same-gender blessings and allows bishops to provide "a generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church."

In his Nov. 23 interview with the Living Church Lawrence said that provision gave permission to bishops to act contrary to the Episcopal Church's canons, its prayer book, church history and the church's historic teaching on marriage.

In October 2010, the South Carolina convention approved six resolutions in response to General Convention's 2009 passage of revised Title IV canons on clergy discipline, according to an explanation posted on the diocese's homepage before the convention. The convention met again in February 2011 and passed two of those resolutions again as required, amending the diocesan constitution to remove the accession clause to the canons of the Episcopal Church and to enable the convention to meet more frequently than annually. The diocesan said at the time that the resolutions were meant to "protect the diocese from any attempt at un-constitutional intrusions in our corporate life in South Carolina."

At Lawrence's direction, Diocesan Chancellor Wade Logan Nov. 16 sent a quitclaim deed to every parish in the diocese. A quitclaim deed generally transfers ownership of the property from the party issuing the deed to the recipient.

"For 190 years (1789-1979) there had never been any idea that somehow the parishes did not completely and fully own their property," Logan said in his letter posted here. He said the diocese could issue quitclaim deeds because the state Supreme Court has said that the 1979 passage by the General Convention of the so-called Dennis Canon was not binding on the parish of All Saints, Pawley's Island, South Carolina.

The "Dennis Canon" (Canon 1.7.4) states that a parish holds its property in trust for the diocese and the Episcopal Church.

Logan said in his Nov. 16 letter to parishes that removing the accession clause was part of the "continued pursuit of our historic unity based on common vision rather than legal coercion."

The quitclaim action was not included in the original material submitted to the board.

Lawrence told the Living Church on Nov. 23 that he issued the quitclaim deed in part because "the threat of property disputes" should not be "the only thing that holds us together."

"Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom, not the keys to the building," he said.

Lawrence said that when he awoke the day after having decided to issue the deeds he felt that "for the first time, I am the bishop of this diocese."

The disciplinary board's investigation of Lawrence appears to be among the first it has conducted. The board was created under the revised Title IV canons on ecclesiastical discipline which went into effect on July 1. The board is made up of 10 bishops elected at any regularly scheduled meeting of the House of Bishops, and four priests or deacons and four lay persons initially appointed by the president of the House of Deputies with the Executive Council and thereafter elected by the House of Deputies. Henderson noted in his fact sheet that the board "operates confidentially."

James Buchanan was president at the time of the election of Abraham Lincoln. Although a Pennsylvanian, he took no action when states seceded from the Union, claiming that he was powerless and thus encouraging that behavior. This story is truly troubling.