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| Bishop Mark Lawrence |
Lawrence writes to South Carolina: Anglican Ink, July 15,
2012.
July 15, 2012
The 77th General Convention has
endorsed sexual, liturgical and doctrinal anarchy, the Bishop of South Carolina
declared in a letter
to the diocese dated 15 July 2012.
The Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence stated the 77th
General Convention that met from 5-12 July in Indianapolis had been an exercise
in “incoherency”, and urged members of the Episcopal Church in his diocese to
pray for discernment as to God’s will for the church in the coming days.
Some good had come from the church’s
triennial meeting of General Convention, the bishop said, and he had taken
“encouragement from the resolutions that were passed regarding needed
structural reform, and for the intentional work in the House of Bishops on
matters of collegiality and honesty.”
Yet this may have been too little, too
late, and was “akin to a long overdue rearranging of the furniture when the
house is on fire.”
The bishops cited four actions taken by the
convention that he believed stood “in direct conflict with the doctrine,
discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them.
While the convention had turned aside the
call for an “Open Table” – removing the requirement that those receiving the
Eucharist be baptized, it was nonetheless an ill portent and “moves the Church
further down the road toward encouraging the communion of the unbaptized which
departs from two thousand years of Christian practice. It also puts the
undiscerning person in spiritual jeopardy.”
He also voiced objection to the adoption of
Resolution A049 which authorized provisional local rites for the blessing of
same-sex relationships. “I will not authorize the use of such rites in the
Diocese of South Carolina. Such rites are not only contrary to the canons of
this diocese and to the judgment of your bishop, but more importantly I believe
they are contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture; to two thousand years of
Christian practice; as well as to our created nature,” Bishop Lawrence said.
The Episcopal Church “had no authority” to
change the “sacramental understanding of marriage as established by God in
creation and blessed through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. It has no
authority to do this either by revising the marriage rite to include
same-sexpartners or by devising some parallel quasi-marital sacramental
service,” he said.
Nor had the General Convention thought
through two resolutions, D002 and D019, which “mark an even further step into
incoherency.”
These two “open the door to innumerable
self-understandings of gender identity and gender expression within the Church;
normalizing ‘transgender,’ ‘bi-sexual,’ ‘questioning,’ and still yet to be
named – self-understandings of individualized eros.”
The consequences of adopting this resolution
for the local church were such that “I fail to see how a rector or parish
leader who embraces such a canonical change has any authority to discipline a
youth minister, Sunday school teacher, or chalice bearer who chooses to dress
as a man one Sunday and as a woman another.”
The convention’s vote to allow the question
of gender to be “self-defined, self-chosen” led to “sheer sexual anarchy” and
would not be countenanced in South Carolina.
Over the coming month the bishop said he
would meet with clergy and church leaders to discuss the questions: “How are we
called to live and be and act? In this present context, how do we make Biblical
Anglicans for a Global Age?”
“I ask that you keep me and the councils of
our diocese in your prayers as you shall be in mine,” Bishop Lawrence said,
adding that “we have many God-size challenges and, I trust, many God-given
opportunities ahead.”
First printed in Anglican
Ink.
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