THANK YOU,

BARBARA MANN

MARCY WALSH

TOM MYERS

DOTTIE PAGLIARO

LYNN PAGLIARO

Episcopalians in South Carolina, indeed everywhere, owe a huge debt of gratitude to Barbara Mann, Marcy Walsh, Tom Myers, Dottie Pagliaro, and Lynn Pagliaro. 

Nearly fifteen years ago, in December of 2003, this small band met informally and resolved to do what they could to keep good relations between the diocese of South Carolina and the Episcopal Church. A few weeks later, their little organization was formally incorporated as the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina with its stated mission "to insure that the Episcopal Diocese of SC continues to exist in full participation with ECUSA, its constitution, canons, and leadership." Its first conference was held in Charleston in February of 2004: "Seeking Unity in Diversity." It drew 200 people. The Episcopal Forum was off and running, for the next fifteen years.

Now the Episcopal Forum is declaring mission accomplished and is dissolving. See the article on this in scepiscopalians at www.scepiscopalians.com . 

The fifteen year history of the Forum has been most remarkable. It is too much to relay here, so I will direct you to the index of my History of the Episcopal Church Schism in South Carolina. Here is a summary:

Upon returning to SC from the General Convention of 2003, Bishop Salmon and the diocesan power structure resolved to reject the validity of the Church's confirmation of Gene Robinson, a non-celibate homosexual man, to be a bishop. This began in earnest an adversarial relationship between the diocesan leadership and the Episcopal Church that was to result nine years later in schism. The Forum was formed to resist this.

The diocesan leadership viewed the Forum variably as insignificant, an adversary, an enemy, but never as a friend. As time went by, the schismatics came more and more to identify the Forum as the disloyal opposition, disloyal, that is, to the diocese. The Forum did not see itself as an adversary of the diocese but as a friend of the national church. 

The diocesan leaders' hostility to the Forum reached a crescendo on October 20, 2012, five days after the schism occurred, when the Rev. Jim Lewis, assistant to Bishop Mark Lawrence, published on the diocesan website: "Episcopal Forum Members Initiate Attack on Bishop." This was flatly untrue. In the first place, there was no "attack." There was a complaint lodged with the Disciplinary Board for Bishops which voted that Lawrence by his own willful actions had abandoned the Episcopal Church. The complaints had actually been two, one in 2011 and one in 2012. The complainants were two dozen communicants of the diocese. They were acting on their own and not as a function of the Forum. The Forum itself had nothing to do with the DBB.

The great historical value of the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina was to organize a loyalist minority within the diocese, to keep it going for nine years, and to present a strong, devoted nucleus of Episcopalians ready to reorganize the diocese in 2012-13 after the schismatics had done their dreaded deed. The remarkable recovery the Episcopal Church in South Carolina enjoyed after the tragic break was in no small part the contribution of the Forum. As they say, the proof is in the pudding: since the schism TECSC has grown by a quarter while DSC declined by a third in numbers of communicants.

It all goes back to that little group of friends who refused to accept the wrong they saw going on around them and resolved to do something about it. We should all join in with a big "Thank You" to the faithful five. Their names are inscribed forever in history.