ECHOES OF SOUTH CAROLINA IN FLORIDA

The state of Florida now has five Episcopal dioceses. The oldest part of the original single diocese is called the Diocese of Florida. It stretches across northeast Florida from Jacksonville to Tallahassee to Gainesville (I was confirmed in TEC in this diocese by the venerable bishop Hamilton West). It is now in the midst of selecting a new bishop, a process that has unsettling echoes from the case of South Carolina in 2006-07. 

One will recall that a candidate for bishop was elected twice by the SC diocesan convention despite, or in defiance, of the swirling controversy around him. He had become recognized as a vocal critic of the church's policies and procedures on homosexuality and the clergy. On his first election, a majority of standing committees in TEC refused to grant consent, triggering a second election. The candidate sent a letter assuring the committees he "intended" to remain in the Episcopal Church (four dioceses were in the process of voting to leave TEC). On the second try, a majority of the committees in TEC gave him the benefit of the doubt and their official consents and the bishop-elect was ordained and consecrated bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina in 2008. Four years and a few months later, the bishop left TEC, leading most of the old diocese out with him. He then functioned as bishop of the new separatist diocese, now called the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, part of the Anglican Church in North America. In retrospect, the hesitations of the first consent process had been prescient. There was plenty of reason for the standing committees to heed to warning signs flashing bright in 2006 and 2007.

I must confess that I am not an expert on the situation in Florida and have not kept up with the ins and outs of recent events so I cannot speak authoritatively about what is going on there. As in SC, there have been two elections in FL. After the first, the Rev. Charlie Holt withdrew. He was then elected for the second time. In FL, however, the issue at hand is not whether the diocese will move to leave TEC but rather whether it will fully embrace the reforms, within the diocese, that the whole church has already adopted for homosexuals and other minorities. There is a certain amount of doubt about this, and subsequently a significant opposition in the national church to giving consent to the new bishop-elect, the Rev. Holt.

There is an informative article about Holt's elections from ENS HERE.

Two organizations have arisen to oppose Holt. One is Deputies of Color. Find their statement HERE. The other is the Episcopal LGBTQ+ Caucus. Find their statement HERE.

The 120-day consent process began in late March and will run until July. One diocese has already denied consent and advertised their position publicly. Find the letter from the standing committee of the Diocese of Ohio HERE.

To be chosen as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, a bishop-elect has to gain majority of the consents of the bishops and of the standing committees of all the dioceses of the church.

The diocesan office in Charleston has told me the Diocese of South Carolina's standing committee will not release how it voted on Holt. I cannot report at this point whether DSC has consented to or denied consent to Holt. We will know how that committee voted when all of the diocesan standing committee votes are announced by the national church, presumably in July.

The situations of South Carolina in 2007 and Florida in 2023 are not exactly the same, but they do resonate the same contentious divisions around how the Episcopal Church should interface with minorities, particularly homosexuals. Over a long and hard process, the national church has made its position and its expectations for the dioceses very clear. No individual will be forced to accept something he or she opposes. However, a diocese of TEC does not have the right to reject the policies and procedures laid down by the consensus of the national church. The question at hand is whether the Rev. Holt is ready to embrace fully the church in the path it has already carved out most decisively.

Drawing from the experience of South Carolina, my advice to the standing committees is:  1-do you homework. Gather all the material and weight everything at hand. 2-judge a candidate by what he has done, not by what he says he is going to do. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Go by what a candidate does rather than what he says. 3-keep the church one of the big tent, but only providing that the candidate is committed to building up the tent and not cutting holes in its fabric or tearing it down.