S.C. Bishop Distances Diocese from Episcopal Church

“Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude 1:3-4

“Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Yet in the same manner these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. Jude 1:7-8

“But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there shall be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.’ These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.” Jude 1:17-19

Religion News Service reports that the bishop of South Carolina has suggested that his diocese withdraw from the denomination’s governing bodies.

“We face a multitude of false teachings,” Bishop Mark Lawrence told clergy from the 75 congregations in his diocese August 13, “which like an intrusive vine is threatening the Episcopal Church as we have inherited it and received it from our ancestors.”

The bishop walked a fine line in his address to clergy Thursday, proposing that the diocese clearly distance itself from the Episcopal Church, but not advocating a full break with the denomination at this time. Lawrence as suggested special resolutions that would register dissent with recent pro-gay actions and remove the diocese from “all bodies of governance” in the Episcopal Church that have assented to the pro-gay.

Thank God for those who hold to God’s word and will not compromise the Biblical truth and bow to the peer pressure of the world.