A DECADE OF SCHISM:

Reflections on the break, the causes and the results of the Episcopal Church split of 2012 in South Carolina

Part 2: The Causes

A. The Underlying Causes

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the schism in South Carolina. A few days ago we looked at what happened in the break itself. In October and November of 2012, the majority of the clergy and laity of the Diocese of South Carolina left the Episcopal Church, the Diocese, and the Anglican Communion, to form a new Christian denomination that later joined a larger new group of like-minded people called the Anglican Church in North America and that adopted the name of Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. This left two dioceses where one once stood, the ongoing Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and the separatist Anglican Diocese of South Carolina.

We should hold two factors in mind at this point. One, the pre-schism diocese of SC divided into two separate parts. Two, this schism was unique in the southeastern United States. No other Episcopal diocese in this region experienced a division. The other diocesan schisms were: Pittsburgh (PA), Ft. Worth (TX), Quincy (IL), and San Joaquin (CA).

Our problem now is why this schism occurred and why it was unique to its region.

Historical problems always have two sets of causation, underlying, or long-term causes, and direct, or immediate causes. The schism in SC is no exception to the rule. It has underlying and direct causes. First, we will look at the underlying causes and then the direct. 

The search for the underlying causes leads us to the broader context of American history. Here we find the schism was part and parcel of the contemporary culture war going on in America.

From the start of our nation to the end of the Second World War (1945), America was a white patriarchy. With very few exceptions, white men monopolized all levers of power in American society. They carried out ethnic cleansing of native peoples, kept African descendants in slavery, then second class citizenship under Jim Crow, women in submission until grudgingly allowing the vote, and foreigners either banned or heavily restricted after 1920. The prevailing narrative of American history was the God-given victory of the white man (Manifest Destiny).

In contrast to this minority power structure, the Twentieth Century brought in two reforming movements, social democracy and populist government. Democracy defeated its rivals in the First World War (monarchy) and the Second World War (totalitarianism). Soviet communism imploded in the 1980's. Democracy, the rule of the people, by the people, and for the people (all the people equally), became the prevailing political system of the world with a few important exceptions. The other, populist government, grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930's when the government moved in to provide for the welfare of the people.

After the Second World War, the two concepts of democracy and populism combined to create an irresistible movement of reform. Elements that had been ignored or marginalized under white patriarchy began to stir against the old status quo. From 1945 to 1968, a great democratic revolution swept America. The two outstanding parts of this were the Civil Rights Movement that started the trend of rights, equality, and inclusion of African Americans in American society, and the women's liberation movement that did the same for women. By 1968, white patriarchy had been seriously challenged. Reforms for homosexuals began in earnest in the 1970's and 80's, another challenge to the old order.

By 1968, the old order caught its breath and began a furious counter-revolutionary backlash against the new challengers. Essentially, American history since 1968 has been a struggle between the ongoing post-WWII great democratic revolution and the reactionary white patriarchy. To complicate this, demographic changes foretold the looming reduction of white people to minority numbers in the U.S. White people would soon lose majority vote in what a great many of them considered historically as their own country. White male fears arose. These soared at the election, and reelection of the first president of African heritage, and the first woman candidate for president of a major party. They found a home in the candidacy, and administration of Donald Trump, who skillfully stoked white fears and resentments. The crescendo was the Trumpist mob's attempt to overthrow the constitutional government on Jan. 6, 2021.

In some way, all American institutions have been swept up into this great culture war. The Episcopal Church was no exception. As the democratic revolution began to emerge after the Second World War, the Church resolved early on to throw in its lot with the new reform movement. By the 1960's, the Episcopal Church was a major part of the national crusade for racial and gender reform. By the 1990's, the Church would add homosexuals to the list.

At the risk of over-simplifying, there are two basic approaches in Christianity, vertical and horizontal. They take different views of the relationship of the divine and the human. Vertical emphasizes a one-to-one relationship between a corrupt and sinful human being and a perfect and all-powerful entity in the beyond. The salvation of the corrupt person is the point of this relationship. Taken to extreme, this can become idolatry as the individual implores this all-powerful deity for favors. Since God created and controls the universe, it is not man's place to question, let alone change, the divine order. Vertical Christianity tends to be socially conservative.

The horizontal viewpoint is that God created human beings in his own image to be his representatives on earth. With the knowledge of good and evil and free will, it is their mission to carry out God's work in the world. Instead of the remote idol, God is the transcendent power present in the transactions. Horizontal Christianity emphasizes change and reform in society (the Social Gospel). In short, vertical is self-oriented while horizontal is communal.

After the Second World War, the Episcopal Church gradually moved from a vertical to a horizontal posture. This continues to today. It came to champion equal rights and inclusion for African Americans, women, homosexuals and the transgendered. Along the way, the Church revised the prayer book liturgies to make them more democratic. 

All of this caused a backlash from those Church people who wanted to continue the emphasis on vertical religion. Southern whites began leaving the Episcopal Church in the 1950's and 60's. When women were given the right to Holy Orders, more conservatives left. Same for the changes in the prayer book. All of these rocked the Episcopal Church but the real explosion came in the 1990's with the reforms for homosexuals.

The battle in TEC over rights for homosexuals ran mainly from 1989 to 1996. At first, the church was divided into thirds, pro, anti, and neutral. By the end, the pro had won the day. In 1997, the first serious breaches in the church began to appear when it was clear that homosexuals had won equality and inclusion in the life of the church. The affirmation of the first open and partnered homosexual person as a bishop (2003) and the election of the first woman as presiding bishop (2006) were immediately followed by four dioceses declaring their departure from the national church.

In short, from the 1950's onward, the Episcopal Church became increasingly horizontal in its exercise of religion. A minority of verticalists rebelled and left the church all along the way but most seriously in 2007 and 2008 when four of the 100-plus dioceses voted to depart.

As we know, South Carolina became the fifth to vote to leave TEC, in 2012. Our problem now is, why South Carolina? We have to start with the generic conservatism of the state and the diocese. It was the most socially conservative of the 100-plus dioceses of the entire Episcopal Church. It was the last to integrate its convention. It admitted the first historically black parish in 1954, nearly a century after the Civil War. It was the last to allow women into offices of power in the diocese. While it did allow women to be ordained, it was very slow to do this. No woman was every named chair of an important diocesan body. Women never had a majority of any diocesan committee. No woman was ever named rector of a large or medium parish. The diocese remained largely a bastion of white patriarchy.

In sum, the underlying causes of the schism in South Carolina came from the divergence of an increasingly socially reformist national church and a historically socially conservative diocese. While the diocese remained, however uneasily, in the national church in the 1950s, 60's, and 70's, the relationship began to alter drastically after 1982. For thirty years, from 1982 to 2012, the diocese of South Carolina moved evermore away from the national mainstream, to the breaking point. Exactly how this occurred will be the topic of our next look at the causes of the schism, the direct, or immediate causes.