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Anglican Diocese of South Carolina

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The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina is a diocese covering an area of 24 counties in the eastern part of the state of South Carolina. The western portion of the state forms part of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina. The see city is Charleston, home to the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul and Diocesan House. In 2010, there were 29,196 baptized members attending 70 congregations served by 107 clergy.[1]

Diocese of South Carolina
Location
Ecclesiastical provinceProvince IV
Statistics
Congregations70
Members29,196
Information
RiteEpiscopal
CathedralCathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul, Charleston
Current leadership
BishopThe Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence
Map
Location of the Diocese of South Carolina
Location of the Diocese of South Carolina
Website
www.dioceseofsc.org

As successor to the Church of England in South Carolina, the diocese was established in 1785. It joined the Episcopal Church in the United States of America in October 1790, making it one of the nine original dioceses of the Episcopal Church. On October 15, 2012, due to disputes over theology and authority within the larger church, the diocese's standing committee voted to withdraw the diocese from the Episcopal Church in an effort to become an autonomous Anglican diocese. The Episcopal Church has disputed these actions, stating that an Episcopal diocese cannot withdraw itself from the larger Episcopal Church.

History

Further information: History of the Episcopal Church (United States)

Colonial origins (1660—1775)

Further information: Colonial period of South Carolina

On April 19, 1660, a group from Virginia attempted to establish an English settlement at or near present-day Beaufort. Morgan Jones of the Church of England was chaplain and presided over the first Anglican services in South Carolina. This colony was unsuccessful and later abandoned.[2]

In 1663,Charles II granted the Lords Proprietors the Province of Carolina and gave them "Power to build and found Churches, Chapels, and Oratories" for use according to the "Ecclesiastical Laws" of England.[3] The first permanent settlement in South Carolina was at Charleston, founded in 1670. The city received its first minister in 1680 with the arrival of Atkin Williamson, and South Carolina's first church, St. Philip's, was built in 1681. In 1702, the newly incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent Samuel Thomas as its first missionary to South Carolina.[4]

Religious toleration fostered by the Lords Proprietors made Carolina attractive to nonconformists. While the colony was dominated by immigrant planters from Barbados who tended to be Anglican, there were significant numbers of Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and French Huguenots. At the start of the 18th century, religious harmony in Carolina began to break down as political factions began to coalesce along religious lines. The Barbadian planters disputed with the Proprietors over debts, land policies, and the Indian Trade. The Huguenots sided with the Anglicans, while the newly arrived dissenters gave their support to the Proprietors who had given them toleration.[5] On May 6, 1704, Anglican governor Nathaniel Johnson called an emergency session of the General Assembly where a bill was introduced to require all members of that body to subscribe to the Test Act, effectively excluding non-Anglicans from the legislature. The Exclusion Act passed by one vote.[6] In November, the General Assembly passed the Establishment Act, making the Church of England the state religion of the Province. Minister salaries and church construction were to be financed by an export and import tax, while local vestries were empowered to raise revenue by assessing the real and personal property of Anglicans and dissenters alike. The Act gave the laity control over the church. Taxpaying parishioners were to select the rector and the vestry, which would manage the parish. A lay commission would exercise oversight over the church at large, with the power to remove ministers.[7]

The 1704 Acts were highly controversial, and dissenters lobbied the English government and public for repeal of the Acts. Daniel Defoe wrote a pamphlet, Case of the Protestant Dissenters, that set out the argument of the nonconformists. They argued that the Exclusion Act was contrary to colonial precedent and the Carolina charter. On the Establishment Act, they argued that it violated the Church of England's episcopal polity by giving lay commissioners powers to discipline clergy.[8] The House of Lords agreed, and Queen Anne declared the acts null and void. On November 30, 1706, the General Assembly repealed both acts.[9] They were replaced by a new Establishment Act that eliminated the commission's ability to discipline clergymen. However, parishioners still elected their ministers, and the lay commission still administered elections and supervised the Church of England in Carolina.[10] An 1710 amendment to the Act abolished parish levies and instead provided that vestries could draw up to ₤40 annually from public funds to cover parish expenses. In this way, dissenters would not directly fund the Church of England.[11]

In 1708, Gideon Johnston was sent by Henry Compton, Bishop of London, as the colony's first commissary. The commissary was the personal representative of the Bishop of London, who had nominal jurisdiction over the church in the colonies.[3] His role was to supervise the clergy and the affairs of the church, and Johnston was a strong advocate of episcopal and clerical authority and adhering to official Anglican doctrine and form.[12] The commissary's influence was limited, however, by lay power and loopholes in the Church Acts.[13] The 1706 Act had taken from the lay commission the power to remove ministers without providing other means of removal. As a result, once a minister had been elected to a parish, a minister could not be removed for behavior. Theoretically, the commissary could revoke a problematic minister's license but not the minister's benefice or salary. Parishes ultimately resorted to paying troublesome ministers to resign.[14] Johnston also attempted to conform the colonial church in all respects to the church in England. He found opposition not only from dissenters but from Anglicans who disliked episcopacy and embraced many of the religious outlooks of the nonconformists.[15]

Concentrated in the lowcountry, with its center at Charleston, the colonial church's membership included the plantation gentry, the professional class, urban merchants, and skilled craftsmen. Most of the Huguenots who immigrated to the colony also converted to Anglicanism. This influence caused the clergy in South Carolina to be more Calvinist than the surrounding colonies.[16] Outside of the lowcountry, however, the Church of England's presence was very weak, the interior being predominantly Presbyterian and Baptist.[17]

Creation and division (1775—1922)

During the American Revolution, dissenters successfully advocated for the disestablishment of the Church of England and ensured that all Protestant religions were treated equally with the adoption of a state constitution in 1778 (equality was extended to Catholics and Jews in 1790).[18] The first state convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina was held on May 12, 1785.[19] In October 1790, South Carolina's state convention unanimously accepted the constitution and canons for the national church adopted by the General Convention at Philadelphia earlier in July 1789.[20] Robert Smith was elected South Carolina's first bishop on February 10, 1795, at the 12th convention.[21]

The Episcopal Church in South Carolina remained disorganized and stagnant during the immediate years after the Revolutionary War.[21] The strong congregationalist tendencies held by the churches contributed to a lack of interest beyond local affairs. After 1798, no convention would meet until 1804. Bishop Smith had died in 1801 and there was no standing committee to examine candidates for holy orders. At the 1804 convention, a standing committee was appointed, and Edward Jenkins was elected bishop. Jenkins, however, declined the office.[22] A lingering fear of tyrannical bishops would leave South Carolina without a bishop until 1812 when Theodore Dehon was elected. In 1810, the Protestant Episcopal Society for the Advancement of Christianity in South Carolina was created on the model of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

During the American Civil War, the Diocese of South Carolina was briefly separated from the Episcopal Church in the United States and was part of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. In 1922, the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina was created from territory formerly part of the original diocese.

Tensions with the national church

The Diocese of South Carolina is one of the most theologically conservative in the Episcopal Church,[citation needed] especially given the departure of dioceses with a similar orientation such as Fort Worth, San Joaquin, and Pittsburgh in the late 2000s. A large number of the Diocese's clergy and laypeople have been particularly active with "renewal" groups, and Anglican realignment has gained steady support among parishioners and leading clergy. Although there are some clergy and parishioners who support national developments, they are in the minority, which is not seen to be the case most other Episcopal Church dioceses in the country. Since 2008, a number of developments have created heightened tension between the diocese and the national Episcopal Church.

Mark J. Lawrence was consecrated and installed as bishop on January 26, 2008, after being elected twice.[23] The polity of the Episcopal Church requires that a majority of standing committees and diocesan bishops give consent to the election of any diocesan bishop. Because of "canonical deficiencies" in several dioceses' responses, the first election was declared void, requiring a second election.[24]

The diocese has opposed actions of the national Episcopal Church that it views as contrary to scripture (see Homosexuality and Anglicanism). After the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed resolutions DO25 (opening "any ordained ministry" to individuals in same sex relationships) and CO56 (concerning the blessing of same sex relationships), the diocese responded by holding a special convention on October 24, 2009.[25] The convention passed a resolution authorizing "the Bishop and Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from all bodies of the Episcopal Church that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them ... until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions". It also declared "Resolutions DO25 and CO56, to be null and void, having no effect in this Diocese, and in violation of our diocesan canon".[26][27]

The diocese attempted to distance itself further from the actions of General Convention in October 2010 and February 2011. At these consecutive diocesan conventions, accession clauses to the canons of the Episcopal Church were removed from the diocese's constitution. This was in response to revisions of Title IV, the canons of the Episcopal Church governing the ecclesiastical discipline of priests and bishops. The diocese claimed the revisions gave the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church too much authority in internal diocesan affairs.[28] While Lawrence stated that he did not intend to lead the diocese out of the Episcopal Church, 12 allegations made by an anonymous party charged that the bishop had "abandon[ed] the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church". Following an investigation in the fall of 2011, the Disciplinary Board for Bishops announced on November 28 that Lawrence's actions did not constitute abandonment.[29]

In November of 2011, the diocese generated more controversy when it issued quitclaim deeds to all parishes in the diocese, thereby surrendering any claim that it might have over parish property. Under the canons of the Episcopal Church, parish property is held in trust for the diocese and the national church; however, South Carolina's diocesan chancellor defended the quitclaim deeds by citing a recent state Supreme Court ruling in one case that the Episcopal Church's property canon was not binding on All Saints parish, Pawleys Island. He also cited the fact that before 1979, the Episcopal Church never claimed ownership of parish property. [29]

In the aftermath of the 2012 General Convention, which voted to allow the blessing of same-sex unions, there was speculation that the diocese was heading for secession. Bishop Lawrence was reported to have said that he personally "no longer sees a place for the diocese in the General Convention".[30]

Moves to disaffiliate

With tensions growing between the diocese and the larger Episcopal Church, the diocese's standing committee passed two corporate resolutions on October 2, 2012, in an effort to conditionally disaffiliated the diocese from the Episcopal Church and also called for a special diocesan convention. These resolutions were to take effect if the national church took disciplinary action against Bishop Lawrence or other diocesan leadership.[31] Bishop Lawrence was notified on October 15, 2012, by the Presiding Bishop that on September 18 the Disciplinary Board for Bishops had certified his abandonment of the Episcopal Church, thus triggering the two resolutions passed earlier. The special convention is scheduled to meet in Charleston at St. Philip’s Church on November 17, 2012.[32]

Representatives of the Episcopal Church have disputed the effects of the standing committee's actions, stating that a diocese cannot withdraw from the Episcopal Church.[33]

Bishops

These are the bishops who have served the Diocese of South Carolina:[34]

  1. Robert Smith (1795–1801)
  2. Theodore Dehon (1812–1817)
  3. Nathaniel Bowen (1818–1839)
  4. Christopher E. Gadsden (1840–1852)
  5. Thomas F. Davis (1853–1871)
  6. William B. W. Howe (1871–1894)
    * Ellison Capers, Coadjutor Bishop (consecrated 1893)
  7. Ellison Capers (1894–1908)
    * William A. Guerry, Coadjutor Bishop (consecrated 1907)
  8. William A. Guerry (1908–1928)
    * Kirkman George Finlay, Coadjutor Bishop (1921–1922)
  9. Albert S. Thomas (1928–1944)
  10. Thomas N. Carruthers, (1944–1960)
  11. Gray Temple (1961–1982)
    * C. FitzSimons Allison, Coadjutor Bishop (consecrated 1980)
  12. C. FitzSimons Allison, (1982–1990)
    * G. Edward Haynsworth, (Assistant, 1985–1990)
  13. Edward L. Salmon, Jr. (1990–2008)
    * William J. Skilton, Suffragan Bishop (1996–2006)
  14. Mark J. Lawrence (2008 - )
    * Michael Nazir-Ali, Visiting Bishop (2010-)

See also

References

  1. ^ 2010 Parochial Reports
  2. ^ Philip G. Clarke, Jr., Anglicanism in South Carolina, 1660-1976: A Chronological History of Dates and Events in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in South Carolina (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press and The. Rev. Emmett Lucas, Jr., 1976), p. 1.
  3. ^ a b George C. Rogers, Jr., Church and State In Eighteenth-Century South Carolina (Charleston, South Carolina: Dalcho Historical Society, 1959), 10.
  4. ^ Clarke, Jr., Anglicanism in South Carolina, pp. 2-4.
  5. ^ S. Charles Bolton, Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 18-23.
  6. ^ Clarke, Jr., Anglicanism in South Carolina, p. 5.
  7. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, pp. 24-26.
  8. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, pp. 26-27.
  9. ^ Clarke, Jr., Anglicanism in South Carolina, p. 6.
  10. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, p. 28.
  11. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, p. 32.
  12. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, p. 29.
  13. ^ Rogers, Jr. 1959, pp. 13-14.
  14. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, p. 30.
  15. ^ Bolton, Southern Anglicanism, p. 31
  16. ^ Holmes, David L. (1993). A Brief History of the Episcopal Church: With A Chapter on the Anglican Reformation and an Appendix on the Quest for an Annulment of Henry VIII. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. p. 35. ISBN 1-56338-060-9.
  17. ^ Rogers, Jr. 1959, pp. 18-19.
  18. ^ Rogers, Jr. 1959, pp. 22-23.
  19. ^ Rogers, Jr. 1959, pp. 26.
  20. ^ Rogers, Jr. 1959, p. 28.
  21. ^ a b Rogers, Jr. 1959, p. 29.
  22. ^ Rogers, Jr. 1959, p. 30.
  23. ^ "South Carolina re-elects Mark Lawrence as bishop" Episcopal News Service, 4 August 2007
  24. ^ "South Carolina election voided due to canonical deficiencies in responses" Episcopal News Service, 15 March 2007
  25. ^ General Convention Resolutions C056 and D025, General Convention 2009 Legislation, accessed 29 April 2011.
  26. ^ "Four of Five Resolutions Overwhelmingly Passed at Special Convention", Diocese of South Carolina, accessed April 28, 2011.
  27. ^ [Resolutions Offered at Special October 24, 2009 Covention", Diocese of South Carolina, accessed April 28, 2011.
  28. ^ Adam Parker, "Episcopal Diocese of S.C. looks to future", The Post and Courier, 27 February 2011, accessed 29 April 2011.
  29. ^ a b Mary Frances Schjonberg (28 November 2011), "Disciplinary Board dismisses abandonment complaint against South Carolina bishop", Episcopal News Service, accessed May 1, 2011.
  30. ^ South Carolina mulls secession: The Church of England Newspaper, August 12, 2012
  31. ^ SC conditional dissociate, October 2, 2012
  32. ^ Episcopal Church Takes Action Against the Bishop and Diocese of SC, Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, accessed October 17, 2012.
  33. ^ Episcopal News Service (November 15, 2012). "Presiding Bishop's Pastoral Letter to Episcopalians in South Carolina".
  34. ^ The Episcopal Church Annual. Morehouse Publishing: New York, NY (2005)

Further reading

  • Childs, Margaretta P.; Leland, Isabella G. (October 1983), "South Carolina Episcopal Church Records", The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 84 (4): 250

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