Ninety years for a seat at convention

The petition

Each Episcopal diocese governs itself through an annual convention, where every parish sends clergy and lay delegates who vote. In 1875 St. Mark's petitioned the convention of the Diocese of South Carolina for full membership. It was the first Black congregation in the diocese to do so, and its request set off a debate about the place of African Americans in the church that lasted for decades.

Turned away

The 1875 convention sent the question to a committee to report the following year. In 1876 a report by Edward McCrady, R. S. Trapier and W. F. Colcock argued against seating St. Mark's delegates on grounds of race, and the convention rejected the application. Around this time a number of parishes withdrew from the diocese for a season over the dispute.

Bishop Stevens of the Reformed Episcopal Church offered St. Mark's a home in his church, with full representation. The parish declined and stayed in the Episcopal Church.

Partial standing

One account says St. Mark's was later accepted, but only as long as its rector was white, and Felder Hutchinson remembered disagreements over admitting the parish while it had a white rector. In 1890 a separate "Colored Convocation" for Black clergy was begun in South Carolina. Through these years St. Mark's grew into one of the largest parishes in the diocese.

1965

St. Mark's was not admitted as a full member of the Diocesan Convention until 1965, when all of the diocese's Black congregations were fully admitted. The National Register listing for the church gives its period of significance as 1876 to 1889 and 1965.

Today

That history is part of why St. Mark's walks with Calvary and St. Stephen's in Our history Three Churches United, a partnership of three historic downtown congregations working on racial reconciliation, from "Bending the Arc" pilgrimages in Georgia and Alabama to worship with Bishop Michael Curry.