The council of the Diocese of South Carolina has adopted three resolutions directed at recent developments in the national church. The resolutions, offered by the five deans of the diocese, were adopted by a majority of the 25-member diocesan council.

One resolution directs the bishop and the diocesan staff to develop a method whereby congregations opposed in conscience to supporting the "national church" may designate that a tithe of their giving to the diocese be committed by the diocesan council to domestic and foreign missions outside the diocese, rather than to the national church.

A second resolution directs the bishop, suffragan bishop and diocesan staff to explore how the diocese may associate with and/or support worldwide and national organizations and movements, such as the American Anglican Council and Ekklesia, "which seek to strengthen our church's affirmation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, our historic creedal faith, and our Anglican commitment" to scripture, tradition and reason, "without presuming to make all members of the diocese members of these organizations."

The third resolution addresses the General Convention action which makes mandatory the ministry of ordained women in every diocese. The resolution states that the diocesan council, "while affirming the diocesan commitment to the inclusion of women in all orders and ministries of the church, expresses its support for, and solidarity with, the Episcopal Synod of America and its member dioceses, parishes and individual clergy and laity, and commits to work cooperatively with them for the welfare and integrity of the entire church."

The Bishop of South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Edward J. Salmon, Jr., is the chair of the diocesan council. The resolutions were sent to each parish in the diocese.

"The action to be taken by parishes is yet to be determined," said the Very Rev. M. Dow Sanderson, rector of Church of the Redeemer, Orangeburg, and one of the deans who presented the resolutions. "These resolutions were simply a first step in assuring that those parishes which could not in conscience support the revisionist agenda of '815' could exercise that conscience."