The allegations are being investigated by the church's Disciplinary Board for Bishops. Communicants in the Diocese of South Carolina filed the information with the board, according to the Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson, board president. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the House of Bishops were not involved in making the claims, Henderson said in a fact sheet.
"Therefore, the matter is not being handled by the Presiding Bishop's office or anyone in the employ of the Episcopal Church Center," Henderson said in the fact sheet.
Henderson said he has been in contact with Lawrence, whose ministry has not been restricted during this phase of the process.
Under Title IV, Canon 16, a bishop is deemed to have abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church by an open renunciation of the doctrine, discipline or worship of the church; by formal admission into any religious body not in communion with the church; or by exercising episcopal acts in and for a religious body other than the church or another church in communion with the church.
The package of documents Lawrence said he received Sept. 29 from Henderson, is posted here on the diocese's website. The documents contain 12 allegations of when Lawrence's "actions and inactions" sought to have abandoned the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church.
Those allegations cite five specific diocesan convention resolutions that Lawrence supported. In addition, the allegations also claim that Lawrence has removed all references to the Episcopal Church from the diocesan website and notes that half of the congregations with working website have done the same or offer links to breakaway Anglican organizations.
"The bishop appears to have done nothing to stop other parishes which are outwardly moving in the direction of withdrawal" from the Episcopal Church, including parishes that have sought or obtained legal advice on those moves, allegation seven says.
Three allegations reference comments made by Lawrence about what he calls the Episcopal Church's "false gospel of indiscriminate inclusivity" and his description of the church as a "comatose patient" that has slowed down Anglicanism in the 21st century.
It is also alleged that missions are being planted in the diocese but Lawrence has not recognized "a congregation of loyal Episcopalians" as a parish or mission.
The 12th allegation surrounds the circumstances of ordination of Lawrence's son.
The diocese also released a letter from Josephine Hicks, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based lawyer, who was retained by the disciplinary board to act as "church attorney" to investigate cases brought to it. Hicks, a former member of the church's Executive Council, asked the Rev. Paul Feuner, diocesan standing committee chair, for documents related to the committee's votes on resolutions submitted to four meetings of diocesan convention between October 2009 and February 2011.
Those resolutions are related to a series of moves the diocese has taken to distance itself from the Episcopal Church, ultimately stemming from disagreements over human sexuality issues and theological interpretation. In October 2009 the diocese authorized Lawrence and the Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from churchwide bodies that assent to "actions deemed contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them, the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference which have expressed the mind of the communion, the Book of Common Prayer and our Constitution and Canons, until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions."
That authorization came in response to two General Convention resolutions passed two months earlier that focused on human sexuality and reaffirmed the Episcopal Church's commitment to the Anglican Communion. Resolution D025 affirms "that God has called and may call" gay and lesbian people "to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church." Resolution C056 calls for the collection and development of theological resources for the blessing of same-gender blessings and allows bishops to provide "a generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church."
In October 2010, the South Carolina convention passed six resolutions in response to General Convention's 2009 passage of revised Title IV canons on clergy discipline, according to an explanation posted on the diocese's homepage before the convention. The convention met again in February 2011and passed two of those resolutions again as required, amending the diocesan constitution to remove the accession clause to the canons of the Episcopal Church, and to enable the convention to meet more frequently than annually.
"These resolutions seek to protect the diocese from any attempt at un-constitutional intrusions in our corporate life in South Carolina and were in response to the revisions to the Title IV Canons of the Episcopal Church," according to a diocesan news report at the time.
In late May, a group of South Carolina Episcopalians asked Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson and the Executive Council to investigate the diocese's actions. At council's meeting in June, it decided to remind the diocese of a resolution it passed in 2007 declaring "null and void" resolutions passed in the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy and San Joaquin repealing or limiting the extent to which they were subject to the Episcopal Church's Constitution and Canons.
Lawrence and Feuner responded, saying the diocese does not recognize the council resolution or "its attempted application to the Diocese of South Carolina." Their response came a day before Lawrence said he received word of the investigation.
In an apparent reference to the 12th allegation, Hicks in her letter also asked for documents pertaining to ordination to the diaconate and priesthood of Lawrence's son, the Rev. Chadwick E. Lawrence. According to packet of information released by the diocese, one area of investigation concerns allegations that Lawrence's son was not a deacon in the Episcopal Church when he ordained him as a priest
Lawrence has called a meeting of all active and canonically resident clergy Oct. 11 "in order to understand the possible implications and to engage in corporate prayer for the diocese."
When Lawrence was first elected bishop in September 2006, he faced numerous questions about whether he would attempt to convince Episcopalians there to leave the church. In a November 6, 2006 letter to the wider church he wrote that he would "work at least as hard at keeping the Diocese of South Carolina in the Episcopal Church as my sister and brother bishops work at keeping the Episcopal Church in covenanted relationship with the worldwide Anglican Communion."
Lawrence did not receive the required consents to his consecration in 2007 because some standing committee consent forms were canonically improper. He was subsequently re-elected, received the consents required for all bishops-elect and was consecrated January 26, 2008.
Near the end of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, Lawrence told reporters that during a meeting of conservative Anglicans and Episcopalians in Jerusalem a few weeks earlier he had witnessed a "new prince" being born.
Lawrence said he knew that his role is to "hold together as much as I can for as long as I can that when he comes to his rightful place on St. Augustine's throne in Canterbury Cathedral he will have a faithful and richly textured kingdom."
The disciplinary board's investigation of Lawrence appears to be among the first it has conducted. The board was created under the revised Title IV canons on ecclesiastical discipline which went into effect on July 1. According to Title IV Canon 17.3, the board is made up of ten bishops elected at any regularly scheduled meeting of the House of Bishops, and four priests or deacons and four lay persons initially appointed by the president of the House of Deputies with the Executive Council and thereafter elected by the House of Deputies. Henderson noted in his fact sheet that the board "operates confidentially."
-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is an editor/reporter for the Episcopal News Service.
Also:
- PDF file containing the allegations made (released by the diocese)
- PDF file containing text of letter from the Church Attorney to the president of the standing committee (released by the diocese)
- Text of memo released by Dorsey Henderson, retired Bishop of Upper South Carolina, president of the 18-member Title IV Disciplinary Board copied below the fold.
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