A LETTER TO THIS EDITOR,

28 SEPTEMBER 2022

It should come as no surprise that people are reacting to yesterday's blockbuster announcement of a deal between the two bishops. I would say the overall tenor of what I am hearing is fatigue-drenched shock and war-weary disappointment. The Hundred Years' War of the Middle Ages was perhaps the longest war on record, but the schism in South Carolina seems that long to the people caught up in it. Yet, one can only wonder if peace at any price is worthy of the conflict. 

At any rate, here is one of the printable communications I have received since yesterday's announcement:

Hello Dr. Caldwell:

I am amused at the subject line, as my father was pastor of Prince of Peace Evangelical Lutheran Church when I was born. But, anyway...

I moved to Raleigh, NC, from Virginia where I had lived all of my life, way back in 1997. I didn't really start to pay much attention to churches, though, until 2004 when I agreed to help an unchurched family member find a spiritual home.

In the course of attending many churches with this person (sometimes as many as three in a weekend) I learned many of their stories. I started to notice a pattern. It usually started with one or more unhappy families at one church---usually a personality conflict with someone in leadership. When the malcontents found a sympathetic clergy willing to help them split, a new church was born. Importantly, so was a new fixed-rate 30-year mortgage.

I've watched the lifecycle of these churches over the past 18 years. Memberships shrink, charismatic clergy leave or retire, some members drift back to the "home" church. But you can see that their fate is sealed when that 30-year mortgage is coming due. There will be a flurry of fundraising, more publicity, clergy turnover gets shorter, and a lot of appeals to nostalgia rain down on past members who are hoped to return.

Ultimately, you know when the battle is lost. The church sign changes. Maybe it's a new denomination or a new name in a foreign language. Sometimes the church of a different denomination next door takes over the property and may even allow the previous tenants to remain for some time after the sale. In the worst case, the building and cemetery  are abandoned. That's all that remains thirty years after the schism, a forgotten memorial to some righteous cause lost to memory.

The ADOSC may thrive, and they may have a good run, but that thirty-year clock is ticking. Maybe the mortgage is paid, but the people have moved on. The same be true of the EDOSC as well. Any church, any denomination, any faith tradition is ever only one generation (+10 years) away from extinction. If faith, hope, and love will carry through to that day, time can only tell.

Very truly yours,

Israel J. Pattison