MARK LAWRENCE TO RETIRE IN FLORENCE SC

Mark Lawrence, bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina for the past nine years, revealed in a recent interview he has bought a house in Florence, South Carolina, presumably for retirement. Find the interview here . One  might have thought he would go off to Pennsylvania, where he served for years and where he keeps ties to Trinity seminary, or to Bakersfield CA, his home. Apparently, the Lawrences will retire in the Pee Dee of SC. Make of this what you will. [Lawrence's son-in-law the Rev. Jason Hamshaw is rector of All Saints, in Florence, a parish that is one of the 29 to be returned to TEC.]

He also confirmed that he will resign as bishop next month, certainly after Edgar is consecrated on March 12.

I found this interview to be quite interesting because we really have not heard much from Lawrence about the schism since it happened. For instance, he confesses that from 2008 to the schism of 2012, he led the diocese in "a resistance movement" within the Episcopal Church. At the time, leaders of the diocese painted a picture that he was the innocent victim of aggression from the national church, particularly the presiding bishop, and that the PB tried to remove him while he was trying to make peace.

His interpretation of the litigation is also interesting. He fails to mention, for instance, that it was his organization that initiated the lawsuits when they sued the Episcopal Church on Jan. 4, 2013. He also does not mention that TEC offered a compromise settlement in June of 2015 in which he would have gotten all of the parishes if he had agreed to hand over the entity of the diocese. Imagine how much that deal would have saved everyone.

He calls the SC Supreme Court ruling of 2017 "very confusing." Au contraire, it was as clear as possible. It spelled out very explicitly three majority decisions.

He calls TEC the "threatening adversary" trying to move "our people back into the Episcopal Church." Nonsense. TEC did not threaten anyone. It was, and is, simply trying to enforce the Dennis Canon, which, incidentally, Lawrence's predecessor had worked long and hard to do in regards to All Saints of Pawleys Island. Under the Canon, the church properties, not the people, belong to the Episcopal Church.

I was a bit surprised at Lawrence's tone about the future of the litigation. He did not sound at all sure that the breakaways would wind up with the properties.

Anyway, this interview is worth one's time to read because it gives us some entry into the mindset of the man who headed the largest schism in the Episcopal Church in modern history. I will return later with reflections on the Lawrence years.