INTERPRETING THE SCHISM IN SC---

A DECADE OUT, PART 1

The schism in the Episcopal Church of lower South Carolina happened over a decade ago. It occurred at noon on October 15, 2012, to be exact. Now, there is a growing sense that the schism has been essentially settled and peace is moving in. It is as if we are waking up from a bad dream only to realize it was not a dream. 

This is an appropriate moment to do some reflecting on what has happened. What is the status of the schism now? More importantly, how can we interpret the schism from the vantage point of a decade out? What does it all mean? Let us take a moment and consider these and other questions around the break.

The two bishops announced in August of 2022 a "final settlement" of the legal issues giving the agreements on most of the big points of contention. Other than that, it was a declaration to make a final settlement since there remained many loose ends to tie up. Moreover, three parishes remained to be determined by the state supreme court and the suit on betterments remains open, so it is not quite true to call last year's deal "final." The litigation spawned by the schism is not over.

In August of 2017, I finished and published my history of the schism (after four years of hard work) on the assumption that the litigation was essentially over. The South Carolina Supreme Court had just ruled by issuing three majority opinions recognizing the Episcopal Church as owing 29 of the 36 parishes in question plus Camp St. Christopher.

 Now, how to interpret what has happened in the decade since 2012? In my book, on pages 495-512, I gave what I thought was a reasonable analysis of the schism based on a mountain of empirical evidence in the previous 494 pages. Looking back, I would not change a word of my conclusion chapter. In fact, much of what I wrote then has been vindicated by subsequent events. What I said then, I think, remains a useful summary of the background, events, and results of the schism of 2012. 

The "final" settlement of the schism as announced last year then is roughly 50/50 for the two parties. The Episcopal side got the historic diocese while the schismatics got the bulk of the local churches.

Before turning to the major takeaways from the schism, we should go over how the 50/50 deal occurred. On the Episcopal side, a key point was on hierarchy. The SC Supreme Court opined in 2017 that TEC was hierarchical. Ever since, the court has consistently reiterated this opinion. It is the one issue on which the court has maintained continuity. The United States District Court, in Charleston, ruled in 2019 that the Episcopal Church was hierarchical. This was the first time that a federal court in America had issued such a judgment. Moreover, the judge issued an Injunction forbidding the separatist organization from claiming to be in any way the historic (pre-schism) diocese. The breakaways largely ignored the Injunction and had to be hauled into court, not once but twice, for contempt of court. As evidenced by their recent convention, they are still refusing to concede the point on the historic diocese. Nevertheless, the law is  clear that TEC is hierarchical and therefore the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina is the one and only heir of the historic diocese. The separatist group now goes by the name of Anglican Diocese of South Carolina having been created after the schism of 2012.

On the separatist side, the ownership of the bulk of the local churches came from the erratic performance of the state supreme court. Although the SC Supreme Court had recognized Episcopal Church ownership of 29 of the 36 parishes in 2017, it went on to reverse this. With three of the five justices from 2017 replaced, a new court discarded the 2017 majority decisions and replaced them with a new ruling in April and August of 2022. In the new iterations, the court moved all but 8 of the 29 parishes to the Anglican side. The reasoning was that these 21 had not "acceded" to or "adopted" (using the actual words) the Dennis Canon in heir parochial records. This was both an internal and an external contradiction. Internally, the SCSC ruled that the Episcopal Church was hierarchical. If it were hierarchical, it controlled the parishes. No local parish had the right to decided on its own whether it would adhere to the canons of the church. The SCSC consistently ruled TEC to be hierarchical. It was externally contradictory because the federal court, which has precedence, had already ruled TEC to be hierarchical. Even under neutral principles, hierarchy would trump state law. It was apparently contradictory for the SCSC to rule for hierarchy and for local parish rights to decide their own policies. Nevertheless, the Anglican Diocese of SC has wound up with the majority of the local churches including all but one of the large parishes.

There will be time for postmortems in the days to come but what strikes me right off is that both sides made major mistakes in the decade, that if corrected, may well have had a huge impact on the subsequent events and probably shortened the legal war a good deal. As I see it, the big mistake the Episcopal side made was the failure to pursue the issue of hierarchy in the state courts. When the TEC made its appeal to the SCSC in 2015, it did not argue for hierarchy. Instead, it argued that individual parishes had acceded to the Dennis Canon and therefore now belonged to the Church. This turned hierarchy on its head. Under hierarchy, the General Convention is over the dioceses, and the dioceses are over the parishes. A parish does not have the right to refuse a national church canon. Accession was not up to the local churches. It was a law of the national church and diocese. In my view, since both state and federal courts had consistently ruled for hierarchy, TEC should have used this as the foundation of its case. It should not have argued in court that certain parishes had acceded to the Dennis Canon. Under hierarchy, all parishes were automatically bound by the Dennis Canon regardless of what they had to say about it. By arguing for individual parish accession, TEC opened the door wide for the SCSC to rule in 2022 that all but 8 had not adhered to the Dennis Canon and were free of Episcopal Church control. 

On the Anglican side, the big mistake was the summary rejection of TEC's offer of June 2015 to swap the diocese for all of the 36 local parishes. The TEC lawyers offered to release claims to all of the 36 parishes if the separatist side would hand over the historic diocese to the Church side. The Anglicans complained that this was not a legitimate and sincere offer. That was not true. The national church had indeed signed off on it. We have the evidence. If the breakaways had accepted the 2015 offer, the schism would have ended then and there and the Anglican diocese would now have all 36 of the local church and not just the 28. Now they are worse off.

In the next part, we will look at some of the major interpretations of the meaning of the schism. To be continued....