NOTES, 20 APRIL 2021
Greetings, blog reader, on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. It is time to check in on the crises we have been following for over a year. This time, we will look at the pandemic and the state of the schism. I think we can set aside the political issues for now.
PANDEMIC. COVID-19 continues to spread apace in the world, according to our usual source, Worldometers. Already this month, there have been 15,000,000 new cases in the world. Deaths are around 200,000. As of April 19, over 3,000,000 (3,034,587) people have died in the plague. The death rate has climbed in the month of April, from 70,000 in the first week of April to 83,300 last week (Apr. 12-19). There is a new surge of cases and deaths in the world now in the spring.
There are signs that a surge may be happening in the United States too. So far this month, the U.S. has added 1.5m new cases. About 20,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus this month. The U.S. death total now stands at 581,061.
The plague continues to spread in South Carolina. The state added app. 20,000 new cases this month, to a total of 569,279. Meanwhile, the death rate has declined. Last week (Apr. 12-19), SC reported 60 deaths from covid, for a total of 9,336. Charleston County added 533 new cases last week, for a total of 42,004. The rate of spread held steady at about 1% a week.
Alabama, on the other hand, showed worsening numbers. New cases there jumped from 2,090 (Apr. 5-12) to 3,502 (Apr. 12-19). AL is now reporting a total of 522,401 cases. The death rate is also rising in the state. Last week, 78 people died of covid, up from the 75 of the previous week, and the 74 of the week before that. AL is now reporting a total of 10,790 deaths from COVID-19.
The anti-covid vaccines are now available to everyone over the age of 16. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of hesitancy in our southeastern states. In all of the U.S., app. 25% of the people have been fully vaccinated. In SC, the number is 23%, in AL 19%.
SCHISM. Nothing new to report on the litigation. We are awaiting word from the South Carolina Supreme Court. The justices will either set a time for a hearing on the case or issue a written decision. The last brief was submitted to the court on 4 March; and there has been no word from the court since then.
Right now, all eyes in the Diocese of South Carolina are focused on the upcoming bishop's election, on Saturday, 1 May (11 days from now).
As I said in my last blog post, I am following the "Views" of the five interviews by Elsa McDowell, that were posted on Youtube on April 7. The numbers of views of each interview suggest relative interest among the public in the various ones of the five nominees. Here is the standing as of this morning (9 a.m., 20 Apr.):
Callie Walpole 445
Ruth Woodliff-Stanley 425
Terence Lee 391
Geoffrey Hoare 370
Kevin Johnson 337
This suggests the most public interest is with the two women candidates. The other three have clearly less interest.
It is also enlightening to look at the numbers since the start of the Walkabouts/Conversations on the morning of Monday, April 12. Here are the numbers of Views since a.m. Apr. 12:
Lee 169
Woodliff-Stanley 169
Walpole 144
Hoare 124
Johnson 111
This shows a surging interest in Lee, the only African-American contestant, and Woodliff-Stanley, one of the two female nominees. Hoare and Johnson seem to be drawing significantly less interest.
As I said earlier, we should not make too much of the View numbers since it represents only the number of times viewers have clicked onto the interview. This does not necessarily translate into votes. All the numbers suggest is relative interest among the five nominees. With that said, I do think the numbers show there is a popular feeling to elect a woman as bishop.
It is also important to note the small numbers of votes in the election. There are roughly around 40 clergy. As for the Order of the Laity, there are 12 parishes, 1 vote each, and 18 missions, 1/2 vote each. This is a total of 21 votes in the lay order. Since there are so few votes in each order, each clergyperson and each local church will have far more power than in years past when the numbers were much greater.
Looking at the recent bishop's elections of which I am familiar, there are two patterns. In one, there is a highly popular nominee who wins on the first ballot. This happened with bishops Salmon and Lawrence. There was no contest. In the other, the nominees are closer together and no one wins a majority in either house on the first ballot. This happened in 1980 when Fitz Allison lead in both orders but lacked a majority in either. Nothing changed much in six ballots. More laity were for Allison than clergy. Finally, enough clergy agreed to follow the lead of the laity and changed their votes to give Allison a bare majority in the Clergy Order while he got a more comfortable majority in the Laity Order. In that case, the clergy followed (reluctantly) the lead of the laity.
The same sort of thing happened in the recent election in Alabama. There, the two women candidates were in the lead on the first ballot but without a majority in either house. The shift on the second ballot was mostly among the clergy who moved more than half of their votes from the two men to the leading woman candidate, Glenda Curry. The laity also gave her a majority, but with less movement. As with Allison, what made that difference was that the clergy followed the lead of the laity and threw their support behind the leading vote-getter.
It seems to me, in the limited information I have, that no one of the five at hand has a lock on this election. If this is true, it would indicate no one is likely to win on the first ballot. If the voting follows the "Views" of the interviews, the two women nominees will lead on the voting on the first ballot. In that case, the movement from the bottom candidates is likely to go to whomever is the top vote-getter on the first ballot. This is what happened with Allison in 1980 and Curry in 2020.
Meanwhile, I am enjoying a beautiful springtime and I hope you are too. Did we ever need it more? After a year and plus of covid and all its ugly and awful effects, we are all yearning for a return to normality. The changing seasons remind us that there is a regular order to the universe that will not be disrupted by a microbe so small it is barely discernible, however vicious it might be.
So, I invite you to take a brief break and sit with me in my garden and take in the beauty all around us. I have wonderful and abundant birds in my garden. You will hear mockingbirds singing.
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Even though I am a democratic republican and student of the French Revolution, I do think we should all extend our warmest wishes to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on her 95th birthday tomorrow, 21 April. After all, she is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the mother of our own Episcopal Church. In South Carolina, the Church of England was the established church from 1706 to 1785 when the remaining churches banded together to form the SC state association of Episcopal churches.
