St. Peter's dates back to Whitsunday (May 29, 1887), when an Evening Prayer service was first celebrated by two lay readers in the parlor of the home of Charlotte Givens. Just one month later, on the Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul (June 29,1887), the Episcopal mission's first regular service was held in a store front on Clark Street. Members of the quickly developing Episcopal congregation took the name of St.

The development deal they thought was in the works fell apart in July after the developer lost a key investor. The property is mired in a web of lawsuits.

The congregation's year in the spiritual wilderness -- including being exiled from the St. James rose garden where the ashes of 12 former parishioners are buried -- wasn't, in their view, necessary.

"We lost our spiritual home for nothing," said Rev. Cindy Voorhees, the pastor of St. James.

For the moment, that quandary is a ways off for U.S. Homeland Security, but in Europe even now the phenomenon is fraught with echoes of the past, problems in the present, and omens for the future. Forced conversions of Muslims and Jews during the Spanish Inquisition were a dark page in Europe's history. More than a little suspicion surrounds some of the current conversions, seen by some to be cynical bids to improve the chance of getting asylum.

"It's the right thing for us to do here in the Carolinas," Bryan said. "The clergy who elected me as their bishop agreed with me that we didn't need another diocese. I am personally looking forward to working with Bishop Steve Wood and sharing episcopal ministry with him."

The clergy and parishes in Bishop Bryan's PEAR-USA network will have until July 1 to apply for admittance into the Diocese of the Carolinas.