From Lubbock Texas-Beyond the headlines, the story of the Diocese of South Carolina’s split from the national Episcopal church is the story of people like Rebecca Lovelace.
For most of her 64 years, she worshipped at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in this quiet farming town and bedroom community about a dozen miles from the high-rise condominiums of Myrtle Beach.
That was until about three months ago, when Lovelace and a small group of other parishioners decided they could not go along when their church followed the Diocese of South Carolina in breaking ties with the national church over ordination of gays and other issues.
Lovelace told her priests she couldn’t stay: “I really truly felt like there was a death in the family.”
Now, her fledgling congregation of about 35 people known as the Conway Worship Group gathers each Sunday at the chapel at Coastal Carolina University. Usually with a retired priest or one on loan from another church, they pray, sing, celebrate communion and make plans for the future.
The schism has been years in the making, dating to the national church’s consecration of its first openly gay bishop in 2003, which upset conservative Episcopalians.
“I think everybody reached a point where they couldn’t go any further,” said Dan Ennis, one of the organizers of the new congregation and who is dean of the university’s College of Humanities and Fine Arts. “A lot of us saw this coming and a lot of us dreaded it, but now at least we know what to do.”
The diocese in eastern South Carolina had 70 congregations with about 29,000 parishioners. It dates to the 1700s and is one of the originals that joined others to form the Episcopal Church.
More here-
http://m.lubbockonline.com/faith/2013-01-11/south-carolina-episcopalians-break-lifelong-homes
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