Priest is braced for more battles

http://www.thestate.com/154/story/68829.html

[The State] 19 May 2007--The Rev. Mark Lawence says he is prepared to re-enter the ecclesiastical fray once the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina renews its bid to elect him as bishop.

There is no question the Lowcountry diocese wants the conservative California priest as its leader. In a recent letter to parishioners, retiring bishop Edward Salmon Jr. wrote of a consensus among leaders that “the Holy Spirit has spoken in the election of Fr. Lawrence.”

But Lawrence said Thursday he knows he will not escape a second round of divisive debate that mirrors in many ways the theological struggle in the larger Episcopal Church.

“I am sure it will happen again,” he said in a telephone interview from his office at at St. Paul’s Episcopal Parish in Bakersfield, Calif. “How it unfolds is hard to know.”