The new bishop of Virginia, E. Mark Stevenson, also a conservative, decided to change his mind on the hot button issue and easily obtained consents.

It's doubtful that had Holt been duly elected he would have gotten consents from the church's House of Bishops. "Beloved Community" is the fabled fiction of PB Michael Curry, another source opined. Curry's much-ballyhooed "beloved community" clearly does not include priests and bishops who do not roll over to the homosexual zeitgeist.

Pushback to Holt was swift coming from a number of sources, including theologian Diana Butler Bass. The ultra-liberal Episcopal theologian weighed in and objected to Holt's Q&A responses on Twitter and suggested that they were grounds for withholding consent to his election. She said Holt should not get the bishops' consents because of his views on homosexuality, pretty well dooming the conservative priest.

It is ironic, because Holt said he would abide by the polity of the church on B012, not prohibit churches that want to perform same sex marriages and would welcome LGBTQ+ persons into the ordination process. Not good enough. You are either totally in or out; the church's pansexual steamroller brooks no compromise.

A formal objection to the election process was filed with the Presiding Bishop who forwarded it to the Court of Review, which claimed that the required clergy quorum for election was not met. The Court of Review claimed that there were procedural and technical flaws with the remote voting process.

To this reporter's knowledge, no other wannabee bishop has ever faced such electoral scrutiny. The wannabe Bishop of Nthn. Michigan, Kevin G. Thew Forrester triggered opposition from across the church after it was revealed that he had received a Zen Buddhist ordination. He failed to get consents, a bridge too far for even the most revisionist of Episcopal bishops, a charge apparently more heinous than being a practicing homosexual!

The Florida diocese's official response to the objection to the process defended the process and charged that the objector's motivation was the result of the process (Holt's election) and not the process itself. The Court of Review of the Episcopal Church sided with objectors. Holt was toast.

The church's pro-sodomite caucus said Holt's views on same sex marriage and comments about LGBTQ people and black people had them apoplectic. Never mind that a group of black pastors in the Sanford area publicly supported him. The Rev. Lowman J. Oliver of St. Paul Missionary Baptist church wrote saying that Holt's support in the Trayvon Martin murder solidified his friendship with Holt. "Holt demonstrated to me a scholarly man and possessed a love of God and humble spirit...I have no hesitation as a black clergyman to support his consideration for bishop!"

Holt backed down, withdrawing his name from consideration, and will continue his prison ministry as a priest, not apparently seeing the irony that the Episcopal Church still embraces him, but in their prison of "inclusion" and "diversity."

Holt, once upon a time, was a member of the American Anglican Council, an orthodox ministry of church planting, now deeply embedded in the ACNA. Holt might want to join former TEC bishops Bill Love and John W. Howe and cross the river of orthodoxy and join them. At least his conscience would be clear. He would have a future with a church that is growing, while the one he remains in is steadily dying.

CORRECTION: SC Bishop Mark Lawrence's consent process was declared null and void when it was discovered that some of the consents we're not received in the proper format (emailed not snail mailed with a postmark). So he had to go through it the same again.

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