Of 507 voting members present, two stood to voice objections. "What's the
rush?" said Guerry Green. "We need to keep trying."

The denomination's approval of an openly gay bishop last summer might have
been the last straw, but the separation had been coming for a long time.

"We've been feeling for years like the liberal side of the Episcopal Church
USA has hijacked the church we know and love," Russ Campbell, a vestry
member, said before the vote.S.C. Bishop Ed Salmon, also a vocal critic of
the Episcopal Church, has been urging members to stay put while awaiting
intervention from the primates of the Anglican Communion, the worldwide body
of which the Episcopal Church is a member.

"All Saints wants to work outside the national church. We want to work
within the national church, to try to reform," Chancellor Ned Zeigler of
Florence, the diocesan attorney, said before the vote.
"We're all working for the same thing. It's hard to understand why we don't
just work together."

All Saints had to leave the Episcopal Church because many parishioners were
threatening to leave otherwise, Campbell said.

"We are already seeing the potential for the erosion for what has been a
strong and vibrant church here by not standing up for what we believe," he
said. "We certainly don't want to leave the Diocese of South Carolina, which
we consider not to be representative of the Episcopal Church. But how do you
reconcile going along with this revisionist theology and political
correctness, which is based on culture and not on Scripture?"

The diocese plans to continue a three-year legal battle to regain control
of the property, Zeigler said.

The canons of the Episcopal Church say that members hold the property in
trust of the denomination. In other words, members can choose to leave, but
they can't take the property with them.

A judge already has ruled that the church's deed, which is older than the
denomination, invalidates the denomination's claims on the property. The
diocese has appealed that ruling.

Salmon recently said he will replace the leadership at All Saints, but
getting a new vestry into the building may require another court order.

"We're still functioning, and we have possession of the property," Campbell
said. "We have a court order that says neither the diocese nor the
denomination has control of the property."

There's also the problem of who would pay the bills on the
multimillion-dollar, 50-acre property if Salmon deposes the vestry, which
would likely cause most of the members to leave.

"That would present a plethora of interesting questions," said the church's
rector, the Rev. Tim Surratt, who is also a target for replacement. "If a
small minority wishes to remain, how could they pay the bills?"

The local church, rather than the diocese, pays a priest's salary, he said.

All Saints has already had two priests leave the Episcopal Church and
remain at All Saints. The Rev. Chuck Murphy resigned in 2000 after becoming
a bishop of Rwanda. A year later, his successor, the Rev. Thad Barnum, also
became a bishop of Rwanda.

All Saints is headquarters of the Anglican Mission in America under
Murphy's leadership. The network includes about 60 congregations who have
left the Episcopal Church and affiliated with the leaders of Rwanda and
South East Asia.

AMIA was preceded by a movement at All Saints called First Promise. The
charter document in 1997 rejected the authority of the Episcopal Church USA
where it contradicts the traditional gospel and vowed to set up alternative
Anglican networks where necessary.

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