SOUTH CAROLINA: Convention to consider resolutions on Episcopal identity, diocesan authority
Episcopal News Service. March 10, 2010 [031010-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
When the Diocese of South Carolina gathers for its annual convention March 26, it will consider a series of resolutions related its role as a diocese of the Episcopal Church.
Among the proposed resolutions, posted here, is one in which the convention "affirms its legal and ecclesiastical authority as a sovereign diocese within the Episcopal Church" and "declares the presiding bishop has no authority to retain attorneys in this diocese that present themselves as the legal counsel for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina." The proposed resolution also demands that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori end any retainer her office has with such legal counsel.
Another resolution would give "explicit canonical force" to what it describes as Bishop Mark Lawrence's practice of "dealing pastorally with parishes struggling with their relationship with the diocese or province." The resolution would add a section to the diocesan canons giving the ecclesiastical authority in the diocese the power "to provide a generous pastoral response" to such parishes.
In a resolution titled "Recognition of the Heritage and a proclamation of the Identity of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina," the convention would declare that "for more than three centuries this diocese has represented the Anglican expression of the faith once for all delivered to the saints" and that "we understand ourselves to be a gospel diocese, called to proclaim an evangelical faith, embodied in a catholic order, and empowered and transformed through the Holy Spirit."
The resolution also proposes that convention "promise under God not to swerve in our belief that above all Jesus came into the world to save the lost, that those who do not know Christ need to be brought into a personal and saving relationship with him, and that those who do know Christ need to be taught by the Holy Scriptures faithfully to follow him all the days of their lives to the Glory of God the Father."
South Carolina's convention had been scheduled for March 4-5 but Lawrence wrote to the diocese in early February saying that the convention would be delayed until March 26 in order for him, the diocesan Standing Committee and the diocese "to adequately consider a response" to what he called an "unjust intrusion into the spiritual and jurisdictional affairs of this sovereign diocese of the Episcopal Church."
Jefferts Schori told the church's Executive Council Feb. 19 that Lawrence had attributed the delay "supposedly to my incursions in South Carolina."
According to a series of letters the diocese has posted here, Thomas Tisdale Jr., a Charleston, South Carolina, attorney and former diocesan chancellor, wrote Jan. 25 to current chancellor Wade Logan III confirming that during a telephone conversation Lawrence said the diocese does not intend to take legal action to protect parish property with regards to what Tisdale called "recent and ongoing actions by some congregations in our diocese that threaten to 'withdraw their parishes from the diocese and the Episcopal Church.'"
Tisdale followed up that letter with others asking for a variety of documents. In the first of those letters, Tisdale said he was "South Carolina counsel for the Episcopal Church."
Logan responded saying in part that "the bishop, as the sovereign authority in this diocese, will work pastorally with diocesan parishes and their members in ways that will seek to keep them a part of this diocese." The chancellor refused to supply the information requested and said that "it seems transparent that the Episcopal Church is trying very hard to find reason to involve either the bishop or the diocese, or perhaps both, in an adversarial situation."
The diocese has been increasingly at odds with the wider Episcopal Church. Last fall, it authorized Lawrence and the Standing Committee to begin withdrawing themselves from church-wide bodies that assent to "actions deemed contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them, the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference which have expressed the mind of the communion, the Book of Common Prayer and our Constitution and Canons, until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions."
When Lawrence was first elected bishop in September 2006, he faced numerous questions about whether he would attempt to convince Episcopalians there to leave the church. In a November 6, 2006 letter to the wider church he wrote that he would "work at least as hard at keeping the Diocese of South Carolina in the Episcopal Church as my sister and brother bishops work at keeping the Episcopal Church in covenanted relationship with the worldwide Anglican Communion."
Lawrence did not receive the required consents to his ordination and consecration because some standing committee consent forms were canonically improper. He was subsequently re-elected, received the required consents and was consecrated Jan. 26, 2008.