From The State today in Columbia, S.C.:
The leader of Midlands and Upstate Episcopalians said this week he remains in prayer and open talks with his fellow bishop in the Lowcountry in hopes of staving off a fracture within the state and the national church over gender issues.
The national church earlier this month approved a same-sex blessing rite and expanded ordination to include transgendered persons.Bishop W. Andrew Waldo has tried to keep his diverse Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina unified despite theological differences over the controversial issues. He said this week he hopes that his friend, Bishop Mark J. Lawrence, leader of the more conservative and traditional Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, in the Lowcountry, will remain on that same path.
“The times are tense,” Waldo wrote in a letter to the 29,000 members of the upper diocese. “Our brothers and sisters in the Diocese of South Carolina are in deep pain struggling with the decisions of General Convention 2012.”
Saying he was “in direct conversation” with Lawrence, Waldo said, “I ask your prayers for Mark and for the Diocese of South Carolina and for me and for this Diocese as we seek to discern God’s will for us, and his challenge to us as his disciples.”
Read entire story here.
Read Bishop Waldo’s letter here.