Updated again Monday
The Diocese of South Carolina held its annual convention last Thursday and Friday. A report is on the diocesan website. This includes the information that a resolution was passed confirming the request for an “Alternative Primatial Relationship”:
“Be it resolved that this 216th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina endorse the action of the Standing Committee, taken June 28, 2006 in requesting from the Archbishop of Canterbury an Alternative Primatial Relationship.
And be it further resolved that this Convention authorize the Diocesan Bishop (with Bishop Salmon acting in his stead until the consecration of Fr. Lawrence), together with the Standing Committee and Diocesan Council, to implement the details of this request, in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, his Panel of Reference, the Primates of the Communion, and the leadership and bishops of the Anglican Communion Network.”
The Diocese of Fort Worth also held its annual convention on Saturday. There, a number of resolutions were passed. Reports of them can be found here, and here. The APO resolution was passed:
#1 upholding the appeal made by the Standing Committee for APO
Clergy 51 in favor. 12 opposed. 80% in favor.
Lay 102 in favor. 21 opposed. 82% in favor.
The official Fort Worth diocesan report is now here.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported it this way: Appeal for new leader is affirmed and also Secede: the only option?
Update 27 November See here for a letter by Katie Sherrod responding to the previous item (scroll down for last letter)
Monday The Episcopal News Service has published a full report by Suzanne Gill FORT WORTH: Diocese withdraws from Province VII, adopts procedure for parishes to leave Anglican Communion Network.
These diocesan votes raise the interesting other side of the coin, insofar as people/parishes in the minority might prefer TECO, or oversight from the regularized processes/relationships already including them in TEC.
It really puts Canterbury on the spot since whatever Canterbury does will be sure to be exploited next in internal CoE pressures for dominance/realignment.
How we do live in interesting times.
I remain intrigued by the dismissal of Resolution 4. How is it that the diocese can have the independent authority to appeal to a primate outside The Episcopal Church (even to Canterbury) and to conform independently to a resolution of Lambeth, but not to engage independently in a listening process? One would think, too, that the marginal good will that might be extended if it had passed (perhaps grudgingly) would have been worth something.
“The Episcopal Church today is like the United States in 1860 — on the verge of civil war. Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 forced South Carolina rebels to attack the Union stronghold of Fort Sumter”
Forced to attack???
Oh brother: Tracey Smith’s *opinion* piece for the FW Star-Telegram shows the spirit of the Old South animating many of the reasserters.
[And it just goes downhill from there (same ol’ canards like “The liberals are practicing revisionist theology, changing God to accommodate man.” Give me a break! >:-/)]
Guess it must have been a slow day on the real estate market in Ft. Worth. I’m sorry, I do not (and should hope not) see a day in which the Rt. Reverend Robinson will retire suddenly to manage the Concord Branch of local historical society or farm an organic herd of Brown Swiss soon (to paraphrase the Dean of Salisbury in her article in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph), so I suggest that Ms. Smith get busy working for that Golden Sport Jacket and get into that million dollar club (did I say once ‘men’s-only’?). Just don’t rely a “Queer Eye”… Read more »
Yes all the available signs at the moment are that Fort Worth is a very narrow tent for institutionally conformed believers only. And somehow or other by the end of the article opinion piece, one starts feeling that the newly conserved as embodied in Bishop Iker in Forth Worth are more like President Lincoln who was doing the right thing by abolishing slavery and preserving the Union of the States, while the terribly awful revisionists are somehow like the USA Confederacy, mounting an attack against Fort Sumter. Except of course that this whole false frame of TEC vs. the Anglican… Read more »
drdanfee – maybe the ABC is like Lincoln and he will have to take on the 2-3m rebels who are causing division against the wishes of more than 70m anglicans……….