The Anglican Communion

The Flag of the Anglican Communion

The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd
Summerville, South Carolina
is a mission church in good standing
of The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina.

The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina,
located in Eastern South Carolina.
is a diocese in The Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church is composed of
IX Provinces across the United States
and countries across the world.

The Episcopal Church
is the official member church of
The Anglican Communion
in the United States.

The Anglican Communion is one of the world’s largest Christian communities. It has tens of millions of members in more than 165 countries around the globe. Anglicanism is one of the traditions or expressions of Christian faith. Others include Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Baptist.

The Communion is organised into a series of provinces and extra-provincial areas. The provinces are subdivided into dioceses, and the dioceses into parishes. There are 41 provinces and, from March 2019, five extra-provincial areas. See here for a full list.

Some provinces are national, others are regional. All are in communion – or a reciprocal relationship – with the See of Canterbury and recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as the Communion’s spiritual head. But there is no central authority in the Anglican Communion.

All of the provinces are autonomous and free to make their own decisions in their own ways – guided by recommendations from the four Instruments:

Archbishop of Canterbury

Lambeth Conference

Primates’ Meeting

Anglican Consultative Council.

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ, in 109 dioceses and three mission areas in 22 nations or territories.

The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The mission of the church, as stated in the Book of Common Prayer’s catechism (p. 855), is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
As part of that mission, we’re following Jesus into loving, liberating and life-giving relationship with God, with each other and with the earth as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. We seek every day to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).

For the Episcopal Church, the Jesus Movement calls us to focus on three specific Priorities:

EVANGELISM:
Listen for Jesus’ movement in our lives and in the world. Give thanks. Proclaim and celebrate it! Invite the Spirit to do the rest.

RECONCILIATION:
Embody the loving, liberating, life-giving way of Jesus with each other.

CREATION CARE:
Encounter and honor the face of God in creation.

The General Convention

Welcome. We are the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, the historic diocese in the Eastern part of South Carolina in union with The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. As the Diocese, we continue to carry forward the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as generations of Episcopalians in South Carolina have done since 1789, confident that by moving forward together in unity and faith, with God's help, we will flourish.

Your participation in the life of our diocese and its parishes, missions and worshiping communities is encouraged. The Episcopal Church always welcomes you!

After a schism in 2012, our diocese was briefly known as The Episcopal Church in South Carolina from January 2013 until September 2019, but we have remained a place for faithful Episcopalians, parishes, missions, and worshiping communities to "love and serve the Lord."

The powerful words of a beloved bishop of The Diocese of South Carolina speak poignantly to us as we continue to rebuild:

“We should strive for unity, not uniformity. Uniformity is mechanical, barren, unfruitful, and unprofitable. Unity is organic, living, and capable of endless growth. If we are to be truly catholic, as Christ himself is catholic, then we must have a church broad enough to embrace within its communion every living human soul.”

The Right Reverend William Alexander Guerry
(1861-1928)