The Rt. Rev. Charles Glenn vonRosenberg, a retired bishop of East Tennessee, has been nominated to serve as bishop provisional of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. vonRosenberg has longstanding ties to South Carolina, a diocese working to regroup in the wake of the departure of Bishop Mark Lawrence and his followers. Episcopal News Service reports:
(vonRosenberg’s) name will be presented for a vote on Jan. 26 when local clergy and laypeople who are continuing with the Episcopal Church gather with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in a special meeting of the diocesan convention at Grace Episcopal Church in Charleston, according to a diocesan press release.
The continuing Diocese of South Carolina needs a new episcopal leader because Jefferts Schori said Dec. 5 that Mark Lawrence had renounced his orders. She and her Council of Advice agreed that, in a Nov. 17 speech to a special diocesan convention, Lawrence said the diocese had left the Episcopal Church a month earlier on Oct. 17 when she restricted his ministry after the church’s Disciplinary Board for Bishops had certified to her that he had abandoned the Episcopal Church “by an open renunciation of the discipline of the church.”
The day the board’s decision was announced, the diocesan Standing Committee said that the action “triggered two pre-existing corporate resolutions of the diocese, which simultaneously disaffiliated the diocese from the Episcopal Church and called a special convention.”
Lawrence asked for and received affirmation from those at the Nov. 17 gathering of that departure.
In addition to voting on vonRosenberg’s nomination, the convention of the continuing diocese will also choose people to fill other diocesan offices made vacant by Lawrence’s actions.
If elected, vonRosenberg would be installed during the Jan. 26 meeting, and immediately take up his duties as bishop of a diocese that covers 24 counties in eastern South Carolina.
Currently, at least 19 parishes and missions and six worship communities in the diocese have indicated they are remaining with the Episcopal Church, and a number of others are still deciding, the diocesan release said.
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