A curious document from Charleston

Posted on October 8, 2011 
Filed under Opinion

In his weekly e-mail update, Bishop David Anderson, President of the American Anglican Council, wonders about the allegations against South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence –

“When one sees the incredibly detailed and ridiculous document comprising the list of charges that was supposedly submitted by a group of loyal (to the Revisionists) people in South Carolina, it certainly doesn’t look like something a group of casual Charlestonians threw together while preparing shrimp and grits on the side.”

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In May and June, the American Anglican Council warned that with the implementation of the new American Episcopal Church (TEC) Title IV Canons, the Presiding Bishop would receive unprecedented power to directly intervene in a diocese or discipline a bishop. Our anticipation was that Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori would move quickly to punish South Carolina TEC Bishop Lawrence by inhibiting/suspending him and the Standing Committee of South Carolina and replace everyone at the top with her hand-picked “loyalists.”  Although such a “Blitzkrieg” approach would have drawn international alarm and censure from many quarters, it was the approach that we considered most likely, based on previous actions.

Apparently, the Presiding Bishop has decided to be more careful about how she drives Bishop Lawrence to the guillotine, and so an elaborate story has been concocted about how loyalists in South Carolina compiled the list of particulars on a grievance letter and sent the complaint to the the President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops. Former Bishop of Upper South Carolina Dorsey Henderson is the President of this board, and so he was the one to communicate with Bishop Lawrence on the “serious charges,” including “Abandonment of the communion of this Church.”

One of the charges is that Bishop Lawrence ordained his son, who has ties to the rival Anglican Church in North America, to the priesthood and then accepted his transfer into the TEC Diocese of South Carolina. If this is true, so what? TEC is ordaining gays and lesbians into the priesthood like their house is on fire, Holy Scripture not withstanding, and giving Holy Communion to the unbaptised, and no one is prosecuted for these serious crimes against good moral order in the Church of God. But let Bishop Lawrence ordain his own son a priest, who was already ordained a deacon by a bishop in good Apostolic Succession but now outside of TEC, and you would think that the sky was falling. And to cap it all off, it is charged that Lawrence then accepted the transfer of the young man into the bishop’s own TEC diocese to work under a TEC rector and a TEC bishop (himself). Again, so what if he did! Does TEC not want other Christians to come into TEC? Not orthodox ones, apparently. Does TEC not want those ordained in other churches to move into TEC? We recall that not too long ago TEC welcomed a young Roman Catholic priest caught romping on the beach with his sweetheart. But evidently there is no welcome for those who are moral and orthodox.

Among the things cited are that Bishop Lawrence and six other orthodox bishops met with Archbishop Rowan Williams. These Communion Partner bishops are named, and I would have to think that for bishops Lillibridge, Little, Love, MacPherson, Smith (ND), and Stanton, this is a shot fired across your bow, warning you of consequences if you don’t stay quiet – and you have three and a half more years of the Jefferts Schori regime.

When one sees the incredibly detailed and ridiculous document comprising the list of charges that was supposedly submitted by a group of loyal (to the Revisionists) people in South Carolina, it certainly doesn’t look like something a group of casual Charlestonians threw together while preparing shrimp and grits on the side. It looks like a carefully crafted and coordinated product of a group of legal professionals. Do you suppose it actually came from somewhere else?

A demand letter has been sent to the SC Standing Committee from Josephine Hicks, an attorney and sometime international representative for TEC, specifying the information that she wants the Standing Committee to prepare and give to her. Could her office have actually prepared the material in the accusations? The difficulty for TEC is that the entire Diocesan Convention participated in a legal way in some of the actions that TEC finds objectionable, so what can TEC do, replace the bishop, Standing Committee, and Diocesan Convention?

I commend Bishop Lawrence for his taking the initiative and publicizing the letters and materials from the “Committee for the Execution of a Bishop” and for calling a diocesan meeting. Our prayers go out to you and your diocese during this season of attack from your own national church leaders.