South Carolina splits from TEC leadership: CEN 8.21.09 p 5. August 31, 2009
Posted by geoconger in 76th General Convention, Church of England Newspaper, South Carolina.trackback
The Bishop of South Carolina has asked his diocese to begin a process of disengagement with the governing organs of the Episcopal Church, but will not pull the diocese out of the church.
At a special meeting of the diocesan clergy held Aug 13, Bishop Mark Lawrence said that in the wake of the Episcopal Church’s decision taken at its General Convention in Anaheim to walk apart from the wider Anglican Communion some “would counsel us that it is past time to cut our moorings from the Episcopal Church and take refuge in a harbor without the pluralism and false teachings” within “our Church.”
Others counseled “patience, to ‘let the Instruments of Unity do their work’,” while some appeared “paralyzed,” adopting a “posture of insular denial of what is inexorably coming upon us all.”
South Carolina would take the middle course, conforming to the teachings of the wider Anglican Communion, while maintaining its place as the Episcopal Church in the lower half of the state of South Carolina.
Bishop Lawrence asked the diocese to consider linking with fellow traditionalists to form “Dioceses in Missional Relationships” with “conservative parishes and missions in dioceses where there is isolation or worse.”
He proposed a statement of clarification made at all new ordinations in the diocese whereby the oath of conformity to the “doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church” would be clarified as an oath in support of what the Church had historically meant by such an oath, “as this Church has received them.”
The diocese would also “establish appropriate boundaries and differentiation” from the national church, Bishop Lawrence said, adding that a resolution will be brought to the next diocesan convention “withdrawing from all bodies of governance” of the Episcopal Church “that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture,” traditional church doctrine, the resolutions of the Lambeth Conferences, the Prayer Book and the church’s constitution and canons “until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions.”
This is “not a flight into isolation; nor is it an abandonment of duty, but the protest of conscience,” he said as the actions of the July General Convention in Anaheim were a “blatant disregard and violation of Holy Scripture, the bonds of affection, and our own Constitution & Canons that one is led by reasoned conviction to undertake an intrepid resistance to the tyranny of the majority over judicious authority; therein erring both in Faith and Order.”
By taking an activist stance now, South Carolina had the “opportunity to help shape the emergence of a truly global Anglicanism,” Bishop Lawrence said. He urged the diocese to begin consideration of the Ridley Draft of the Anglican Covenant, and “weave and braid missional relationships which strengthen far flung dioceses and provinces in the work of the Gospel.”
The problems within the Episcopal Church were the result of “false teachings” promulgated by the liberal hierarchy and a generation of poor clergy formation. This had created a “Gospel of Indiscriminate Inclusivity” that had led to a deconstruction of classical Christian doctrine.
The doctrine of the Trinity was under assault, he said, noting the passion for inclusive language that removed masculine names for the Father and the Son, had resulted in a corrupted view of the nature of God.
This was coupled by “irresponsible” comments that appeared to deny the “Uniqueness and Universality of Christ” by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. As a bishop of the church, it was her “responsibility” to “proclaim the saving work of Jesus Christ and to teach what it is the Scriptures and the Church teach. Anything less from us who are bishops is an abdication of our teaching office.”
The power and place of Holy Scripture was also under assault, Bishop Lawrence said, as “in my experience all too many of our bishops and priests seem to mine the scriptures for minerals to use in vain idolatries. There is too little confidence expressed in its trustworthiness; the authority and uniqueness of revelation.”
He stated that “ridiculous arguments such as shellfish and mixed fabrics are dragged out” which has long ago been reconciled by the Church Fathers “to confuse the ill-taught or the untutored in theology” to support the progressive agenda.
The revisions to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer’s Baptismal liturgy had further created a new theology whose mantra had become “all the sacraments for all the Baptized,” substituting God’s grace for a belief in civil rights, while the Episcopal Church’s wholesale revision of traditional teachings on human sexuality had now posited the “moral equivalency of GLBT sexual unions with the Christian understanding of marriage between a man and a woman.”
The path of “indiscriminate inclusivity” began with the “denigration of the Holy Scriptures, then, step by step has brought the very core teachings of the Christian faith under its distorting and destructive sway.” The Episcopal Church had now reached the point whereby that which contradicted the new doctrines, such as traditional church moral teachings, where considered to be the problem—not the new teachings.
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