THE ANGLICAN DIOCESE AND THE INJUNCTION

While I am not a lawyer and not offering legal advice here, I am of the opinion that the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina is apparently still in defiance of a federal court Injunction. What makes this most disappointing is that we are supposedly in a new era of good feelings between the two dioceses. Maybe the truth is we are not.

On September 19, 2019, the federal district court in Charleston, Judge Richard Gergel presiding, issued a JUDGMENT that the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina was the one and only legal heir of the historic Diocese of South Carolina owing to the principle of hierarchy that governed the Episcopal Church. At the same time, he issued an Injunction forbidding the separatist association from using the names, emblems, and marks of the historic diocese. The next day, the separatists adopted the name of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. Otherwise, they were very slow in adhering to the Injunction, so slow that the Episcopal side complained to the judge and Gergel issued an enforcement of the Injunction on December 8, 2019. The Injunction remained in effect during the Anglican's appeal of Gergel's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals (the Anglicans withdrew this appeal as part of the "final settlement" announced in 2022). However, the Anglican side continued to drag its feet on following the Injunction, so that the Episcopal side went back to court listing twenty-seven violations. On October 27, 2020, Gergel found the ADSC in contempt of court a second time. He did not impose any punishment because, he said, the EDSC side had not asked for any. So, the Anglican diocese has now been under a federal court order for three and a half years not to claim to be in any way the pre-schism diocese. They have been held in contempt of court for violating this formal Injunction, not once but twice. Well, the ADSC held its annual meeting this month, and here we go again. It appears to me they are still in serious defiance of the federal court order.

In this meeting, the convention revised the Constitution of the ADSC while making numerous allusions to the historic diocese. Bear in mind that the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina has sole ownership of the names and symbols of the pre-schism diocese. The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina did not exist before the schism, which occurred at noon on October 15, 2012. "The diocese" before that date was the Episcopal diocese.

In the first place, on the DRAFT COPY of the revisions to the diocesan constitution, apparently the seal of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina appears at the top of all nine pages. If this is true, it would be a direct violation of the Injunction which forbids the new diocese from using the historic seal. Now, it is also true that on the FINAL COPY , the seal was omitted on every page. This raises the question of why it appeared on any version of the ADSC constitution. (To my knowledge the ADSC has not adopted a seal.) 

Moreover, both the draft and final copies listed thirteen resolutions "passed" by conventions before 2012, going all the way back to 1872. The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina did not exist before 2012. What they were referring to were resolutions passed by the historic diocese which was the Episcopal diocese. Under the Injunction they cannot claim to be the historic diocese. It seems to me these are thirteen violations of the federal court Injunction.

On a curious point, on page 6, we see this: "The Anglican diocese of South Carolina is incorporated..." It does not say when it was incorporated. If the ADSC were incorporated after Oct. 15, 2012, I missed it. Perhaps the ADSC diocesan office could remind us when the Anglican diocese was legally incorporated under state law. The Episcopal diocese was incorporated under state law in 1974. The ADSC did not exist at that time.

It seems to me that the breakaway diocese refuses to give up its claim to history in spite of courts. This attitude permeates the whole diocese. For instance, the occupants of every one of the seven parishes that returned to the Episcopal diocese last year left the properties but kept the old names of the parishes and simply tagged "Anglican" on them. This was a refusal to accept in good will the decisions of the courts. 

The disputes of the schism are moving ever closer to being settled. Essentially, the Episcopal side got the historic diocese (and its assets and properties) and the breakaway side got the bulk of the local churches. It is incumbent on the Episcopal diocese to protect its position at this point and going into the future. Its validity in this dispute rests on its historic identity. This must be protected against all violations.

So, what to do? I do not think anyone could envision the arrests of the Anglican bishop and chancellor, although I suspect some Episcopalians have harbored images of them being handcuffed and pressed into squad cars. That is not going to happen. Then, what about money damages? Being nice has not worked. If we have learned anything at all in this decade of litigation, it is that the Anglican lawyers skillfully played hardball. Maybe the Episcopal side could try that here. What about a million dollars for every violation of the Injunction this month? I count 22 violations in the draft and final copies of the ADSC Constitution. I think $22m would be a fair sum, don't you? That would get their attention. Since the Anglican side has apparently flagrantly disregarded the federal court Injunction for three and a half years, something needs to get their attention.

Apart from the Injunction, there is something else in the ADSC Constitution that should get our attention. The last page reminds us in no uncertain terms the aim of this schism, homophobia and anti-trans. This schism was to keep homosexuals and trans people from having the same human rights as everyone else. However, the rationales were based on false assumptions. In the first place it asserted that God made every person "male or female." This is non-Biblical. The Bible says repeatedly God made human beings "male and female." The word is "and" and not "or." Besides, there are humans born with no definable gender and there are others born with both sets of genitals. So it is demonstrably false to say that God made all humans male or female. 

A curious point about this part of the Constitution is that it has been revised since it was first established in the diocesan  Statement of Faith in 2015. The original Statement held that marriage is for lifetime. Some parishes balked at this and deleted that provision before ratifying the Statement (they would have lost many of their congregants if this were enforced). Note that the 2023 iteration of the Statement in the Constitution omits the provision of lifetime marriage. The point is that the Statement, the Constitution, indeed the schism were not about marriage. They were about homophobia.

This leads us back to the overall significance of this schism. It is an important part of the contemporary culture war. The Episcopal Church made a bold decision in the 1950's to join in the great democratic revolution that was just beginning to sweep America. Once in, TEC championed equality for and inclusion of racial minorities, women, homosexuals, and trans people among others. A minority in the Church rebelled against this reform movement. The breaking point came in the 1990's when it was clear that TEC had made a de facto settlement for homosexuals. A separatist movement began boiling up in the Diocese of South Carolina as a backlash against the national church's democratic trajectory. The break was thirty years in the making in SC, coming to a head in 2012. Hence, the Anglican diocesan constitution as in its latest version, of this year. 

What the Episcopal diocese got out of the schism was ownership of the historic diocese. Apparently, the separatists are not quite on board with this. The EDSC must find ways to bring this about.