REMEMBRANCE DAY AHEAD

Today is October 12, 2022. In three days, we will mark the tenth anniversary of the division of the old diocese of South Carolina. The break happened at 12:00 noon on October 15, 2012. I suggest that everyone take a moment at noon on this Saturday, the 15th to reflect on the schism of 2012. I expect to be in my garden for a time of prayer and meditation immersed in the lovely and comforting God-given beauty of autumn. 

How one now sees the schism depends on where one stands. I expect many people on the Episcopal side will mourn for the departed brothers and sisters and for the scandalous unpleasantness of the past decade. However, on the secessionist side there may be a sense of rejoicing at the freedom from what they saw, and still see, as an heretical denomination and at the victory of rescuing almost all of the large parishes from the clutches of that errant church. Nevertheless, there may still be a some sense of "loss" among the departed church people since they have lost both their ancestral church and the Anglican Communion. Adopting the name "Anglican" does not make then Anglicans since an Anglican is defined as one in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury which the secessionist diocese in SC is not.

So, the people in both parts of the schism may be grieving "loss" in one way or another. Perhaps it is useful at this point to review the five stages of grief after loss. How does your own experience fit into these?

1-DENIAL.  This one is not so clear. Everyone knew for years before the schism of 2012 that the Diocese of South Carolina was on the road to schism. It was plain to see, so no one could have been surprised when it happened. On the Episcopal side, perhaps the denial was the tendency to see the break as only temporary, that the two sides would patch up their differences and go on together. I suspect that hope has fallen by the wayside. On the separatist side was the fierce resolve that they held an iron-clad hold on the old diocese. They insisted they were the continuation of the historic Diocese of South Carolina. They denied that there had been a schism.

2-ANGER.  One cannot quantify this, but I suspect there was a great deal of anger on both sides as the litigation dragged on year after year in one court after another. What to blame for this except the schism?

3-BARGAINING.  For nearly ten years, all bargaining between the two parties failed. In 2015, the Episcopal side offered a grand compromise: the diocese for the parishes. The secessionist side disdainfully dismissed this out of hand. Twice courts ordered mediation, all to no avail. The talks never got off the ground.

4-DEPRESSION.  Along the way in the ten years, both sides suffered significant depression, even despair. The low point for the breakaways was the South Carolina Supreme Court decision of 2017 that recognized Episcopal ownership of the diocese (mainly the Camp) and 29 of the 36 parishes in question. The low point for the Episcopal party was the circuit court's rejection of the SCSC decision, in 2020, and the subsequent inexplicable decisions of the SCSC to roll back the Episcopal gains from 29 to 8 local churches.

5-ACCEPTANCE.  Last year, both dioceses elected new bishops, both of which came from outside. Neither new bishop had had anything whatsoever to do with the schism or its aftermath. They have begun to work together to resolve the legal differences in the acceptance of each other as equals. This also signals the acceptance that two separate dioceses will go on indefinitely into the future. The long tone of hostility is easing into at least grudging, pragmatic acceptance of reality.

Might the two separate parts go back together as in the old days before 2012? Of course, anything is possible but at this point in time, considering everything, I think it is most unlikely. 

There was a flurry of excitement last week at the news that an ACNA church in Indiana had voted to join the Episcopal Church. If it can happen in Indiana, could it happen in South Carolina? Could some of the parishes in the breakaway diocese in SC rejoin their ancestral church? Under the circumstances in SC, I think the chances of this happening are nil. Here's why:

The church in Indiana was not part of a schism. It was simply a church plant by an ACNA church that decided they were more comfortable with the social policies of TEC. This situation is a far cry from that of SC.

A major part of the schism in SC was the close binding of the local churches into the schism. Immediately after the schism, the breakaway leaders leaned on the local church to sign a form of commitment to the secession. They also got 36 local parishes to join in their lawsuit against TEC (Jan. 4, 2013). This was the only case among the five schisms where local churches joined in the litigation. There were some dozen local churches that bound themselves to the secession but did not enter into the lawsuit. All of the 36 parishes had to procure lawyers to represent them and to go through the whole decade of litigation. 

In 2017, when the SCSC decision seemed to mean the "loss" of 29 parishes to TEC, the secessionist leaders prepared for removal of the congregations from the properties as continuing parishes elsewhere. Late that year, they sent out a secret plan for the relocations. In the spring of the next year, they began conducting prepared anti-Episcopal propaganda campaigns in some of the 29 parishes to convince communicants not to remain behind with the properties when the time came for relocation. Add this to the years of hostility to the Episcopal Church before the schism, and the years of legal warfare, and one would find a thoroughly negative view of TEC among the local churches that went along with the schism. Given this deep-seated negativity to TEC, I think the chance any one local church would bolt from ADSC for the Episcopal diocese in the foreseeable future is nil to none.

So, again, you might want to pause at noon, on this coming Saturday, the 15th of October and remember in your own way the tenth anniversary of the schism in South Carolina.