EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF SC DISCOURAGES RE-OPENING OF CHURCHES
On yesterday, May 28, 2010, the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina issued a statement basically discouraging local churches from resuming worship services in the church buildings. Find the statement at episcopalchurchsc.org/news-blog . Find it here .
In the first place, the note recommends online services "as the primary means of worship." In the second place, it implies a local church should develop "a plan" to take all the precautions appropriate and then may proceed to indoor worship. In the third place, it recommends that all services and other gatherings should be held outdoors. The message I see in this memo is to discourage local congregations from returning to worship in the church buildings for the foreseeable future. It encourages Internet services instead of in-person ones. However, it allows congregations to resume services but leans on them to hold them outside of the church buildings. At least this is my interpretation of yesterday's message. My take-away from this is that Episcopal churches in lower SC should not resume in-person worship but if they do, they should hold services outside.
The Anglican and Episcopal dioceses have issued guidelines for the re-opening of churches. Find the Anglican one here . Find the Episcopal one here . One observation I have about these two papers is that they point out the differences between the two approaches that led up to the schism of 2012. As anyone who has read my history of the schism knows, there was a difference between the two "sides" on vertical versus horizontal religion. Vertical is oriented to a posture of one person-one God (personal salvation). Horizontal is oriented to a person's relationships to the world as directed by one's faith in God (the social gospel). In the first, God is an authority figure who controls all. In the second, God is a transcendent force working in our transactional relationships with others. The Episcopal Church developed as a horizontal-oriented religion after the 1950's but there was a counter backlash led by vertically-oriented forces. The vertical forces created the five schisms in the Episcopal Church between 2007 and 2012. The Anglican diocese of SC is the result of the schism in SC. It is a vertical-oriented religion.
We can still see that dichotomy in the two approaches to the re-opening of churches in SC. The ADSC has an authoritarian plan with "Requirements" that are absolute and "Recommendations" that are strong suggestions but not necessarily requirements. This was handed down by the authority of the bishop. It even includes a letter the local church should send out to its communicants. The EDSC has an almost entirely independent plan where local congregations essentially decide on their own how to resume services. The only "requirement" on the Episcopal side is that communion be in bread only. So, here we have the driving issue of the schism in a nutshell: vertical and horizontal.
Another observation I have is that people are very reluctant to return to their church buildings. As we have seen, the Anglican diocese allowed the reopening of churches two Sundays ago. Of the 50 or so local churches in the ADSC, I found only 2 that reopened and both of those had very sparse congregations, I would guess between 10 and 20 percent of their usual attendance. It seemed to me the services were awkward and unsatisfactory for the attendees. The congregations appeared to be more like a studio audience at the taping of a TV show than participants in a religious service.
We are in a difficult position as we want to do everything we can to stop the spread of the coronavirus and also to resume the congregational dimension of our religion. The leaders of both Anglican and Episcopal diocese are right to insist on a go-slow approach. The church will survive. It will live on in spite of the virus. What may not survive this crisis is that vulnerable person who is endangered by the easy spread of this highly contagious and deadly germ.
