THE FIRST HOMECOMING:

ST. JOHN'S, JOHNS ISLAND

St. John's Parish Church, on Johns Island, Charleston, has not seen an Episcopal Church service in nearly a decade. That comes to an end on Sunday, 17 July 2022, when St. John's will come home to the Episcopal Church, its ancestral denomination since 1785. An Episcopal clergy person will conduct Episcopal prayer book services at St. John's this Sunday, the first since the schism of October 15, 2012. This is a milestone event in the long and tragic history of the schism in South Carolina.

The new vicar in charge of St. John's is the Rev. Calhoun Walpole, recently the archdeacon of the Diocese of South Carolina, and presently a canon of Grace Church Cathedral, in Charleston. She is a daughter of St. John's Church. This will be a homecoming for her too.

The Rev. Walpole will celebrate Holy Eucharist, Rite I, and preach at 8:00 a.m. She will also celebrate Holy Eucharist, Rite II, and preach at 10:30 a.m. Another clergy person will conduct a service at Grace Chapel, St. John's chapel of ease, at Rockville, at 9:00 a.m.

The 10:30 service will be Livestreamed on Facebook. Find the link HERE .

Find the website of St. John's HERE .

Find the Facebook page of St. John's HERE .

Find a Youtube video of St. John's at  youtube/watch?v=DIS1Sy9ZjsU.

The services on this Sunday will be festivals of joy and thanksgiving. I will be there in spirit since I cannot be there in person. I will certainly be watching the livestream.

It remains to be seen how many of the people-in-the-pews from last Sunday will be in St. John's this Sunday. It is a given that most of them will follow the Anglican clergy to meet in Haut Gap Middle School, on Johns Island. Many people want to remain bonded in church with their families, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. The Anglican clergy have done about all they could in the past few weeks to keep the congregation together and away from the Episcopal Church. I expect most of the old congregation will go to Haut Gap but how long they remain there is an open question. 

For years before the schism, and ever since, the Anglican leaders have insisted to their people that the Episcopal Church had fallen away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was meant to justify the schism. This was nonsense, of course, as the people who now attend St. John's will find out. The ancestral religion has not changed. The real difference between the Anglican and Episcopal denominations in SC has to do more with the acceptance and inclusion of all people without discrimination. In the Episcopal Church, women and gays are welcomed as free and equal, not so on the other side.

The contingent that will meet at Haut Gap is still calling itself "Saint John's Parish Church" and is using the old logo. I am not a lawyer, but I would bet this is not legal. The SC Supreme Court has ordered that St. John's parish church be returned to the Episcopal Church. Surely the church name and logo belong to the historic parish, not the new contingent that left St. John's. In my understanding, everything that was part of the church before 12:00 p.m., on Monday, October 15, 2012, belongs to St. John's, and the church belongs to the Episcopal diocese.

St. John's return to the Episcopal Church will be the first restoration since the schism nearly ten years ago. There are six more parishes on the docket to be returned. Beyond this, there are seven more still to be determined by the SC Supreme Court. When the justices will rule on these seven is anyone's guess.

Thus, the restoration of St. John's to its historic denomination is the first of many to come, and some sooner rather than later. With God's grace, this is the beginning of what is still to be a long and arduous end of the settlement between the two parts that came out of the schism of 2012.

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UPDATE ON TRANSITIONS. July 16, 2022.

Christ Church, of Mt. Pleasant, will hold its last Anglican service on 28 August: "A Service of Thanksgiving, Lament, and New Life." The Anglican clergy will vacate the property after that and begin holding services at Jennie Moore Elementary School, 2725 Hamlin Road, Mt. Pleasant, about a mile away. Presumably, Episcopal prayer book services will resume at Christ Church on the first Sunday of September.