LITTLE INTEREST, AND LITTLE INTERESTING, IN FIRST WALKABOUT OF ADSC

Well, I made it through the whole two plus hours of the first Walkabout of the candidates for bishop coadjutor of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. Yawn. Apparently, I was one of few people who actually sat through it all. At most, in the middle, there were 59 people watching online. They dwindled away. There were only two comments in the chat room. By contrast, there were some 250 people who watched each of the walkabouts, last Sunday and Monday, in the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina. Thus four to five times as many people watched the walkabouts in the EDUSC as watched the ADSC show today.

Why the lack of interest in the next bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina? I do not know the answer to that. Is it because people just do not care? Is it because people know it is a foregone conclusion? Is it because people do not like any of the three candidates? I wonder.

The walkabout today shed little light on the subject. The questions were all super soft balls. The three sat together and most echoed each other. Rob Sturdy had an irritating habit of grinning at the wrong times and played with his cell phone the whole time (I do not blame him). Sturdy also ignored the federal court injunction against the ADSC twice. Once he said "our diocese" divided in 1865 along racial lines. Another time he referred to "the Diocese of South Carolina" in reference to Camp St. Christopher. According to the federal court, the ADSC did not exist before 2012 and is forbidden from calling itself the historic diocese or "the Diocese of South Carolina." Sturdy might want to study the federal court ruling. Sturdy was also the only one who referred to the church reaching out to young people, a good point. However, a church, as the Anglican Church in North America, that is based on misogyny and homophobia has no future among young people who are almost universally in favor of equality and inclusion for all people. 

All of the responses to the questions were all about vertical religion so the three vied with each other on their close relationships with God, particularly the Holy Spirit. There was virtually no word about making the world around us a better place. It was all about the power of God.

Of course, the 800 pound gorilla in the room was the schism and the lawsuits. None of the questions even hinted at this. Only one candidate (Edgar) even briefly alluded to it as he commented that the ADSC might "lose" Camp St. Christopher. As we know, the state supreme court recognized the Episcopal diocese as the owner of the Camp. Dickson reverse that but his order is on appeal now.

Let's hope we hear some new questions in future. Tomorrow is in Florence. Better yet, how about something of importance or controversy? This road show will be excruciatingly boring, uninteresting, and un-enlightening if it is just repeated day after day, three more to come.