South Carolina the latest target in the gunsights of the national Episcopal Church: The Church of England Newspaper, Oct 22, 2010 p 7.

Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The Diocese of South Carolina synod has revised its bylaws in a bid to protect itself from legal predations from the national Episcopal Church.  Meeting on Oct 15, at St Paul’s Church in Summerville, South Carolina adopted six resolutions that ended the diocese’s automatic accession to the national church’s canons.

At the close of its March meeting, Bishop Mark Lawrence prorogued the 219^th annual meeting of the diocesan convention, after US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori engaged an attorney to represent the Episcopal Church in South Carolina.  The diocese requested an explanation for what it saw as an unlawful usurpation of authority by the presiding bishop, and postponed the adjournment of its synod pending a response.

The presiding bishop declined to respond, but as it waited the diocesan leadership began a review of the national church canons enacted at the 2009 General Convention covering clergy discipline.

“What we found was shocking,” Canon Kendall Harmon told Anglican TV, as it “violates due process” and natural justice.

A paper prepared by South Carolina attorney Alan Runyan and canon lawyer Mark McCall of the Anglican Communion Institute on the implications of the new canons, also found they were in direct conflict with the national church’s constitution, and gathered into the presiding bishop’s hands powers never held by that office.

To protect itself, the diocesan leadership offered six resolutions to the convention that changed its bylaws, Canon Harmon explained, which were adopted with sizeable majorities by the synod.

In his convention address, Bishop Mark Lawrence said the resolutions were not “intended to remove this diocese from the Episcopal Church,” but were proposed for the purpose of “enabling” the diocese “to continue to rightly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church (rightly understood) and the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them and to be able to stand as a serious minority voice in this Church.”

He added that his prayer for the diocese was that we “will continue to recognize that we are in a season not unlike the days of Nehemiah:  when men and women were called to have a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other—or to put it in New Testament terms, to guard the faith and to proclaim the Gospel.”

The threats to its independence were real, he added, stating that he had received a telephone call earlier in the week from a “fellow bishop” who said he and five others had been asked by the presiding bishop to let him know the “apparent focus of this diocesan gathering does not bode well for [Mark’s] status as a bishop who has sworn to uphold the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this Church.”

Bishop Lawrence stated he wrote to the Presiding Bishop asking her for an explanation of this threat.  She responded that she feared for the “havoc that she believes is likely to ensue if I keep on my present course.”

“What she fails to address or I suppose to understand is the havoc that is likely to ensue if we depart from our present course,” Bishop Lawrence said, noting that “there is no risk free way forward for us.”