​Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley has called the Rev. Laura Rezac as executive director of St. Christopher Camp & Conference Center on Seabrook Island, succeeding the Rev. Helen and Rick Hargreaves, who have been serving as interim directors for the past seven months. The Rev. Rezac currently serves as associate rector for Children & Youth Formation at St. Stephen’s, Charleston, and she has been serving as chair of the Steering Committee at St. Christopher Camp & Conference Center, leading the transition of the property back to our diocese since it was returned in October 2022. She will begin this new role in June, serving alongside the Hargreaves through the end of August.
 
“It is with much joy that I announce my call of the Rev. Laura Rezac to serve as the executive director of St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center,” said Bishop Woodliff-Stanley. “With a background as an educator, a skilled outdoor and camping guide, and an experienced youth leader and program developer, Laura combines her love of conference and camping ministries with the skill set we need to support our vital camp and conference center ministries.”
 
“As chair of the Steering Committee for the past six months, Laura has provided leadership for the transition of St Christopher back to the diocese,” said Bishop Woodliff-Stanley. “In this role, Laura has worked with staff, the steering committee, our consultants, our chancellor, and other leaders on a range of issues we have needed to address to insure the successful transition to a new season. She has skillfully navigated detailed financial, personnel, legal, pastoral, spiritual, and insurance matters in a way that has won the confidence of staff and diocesan leaders. I am thrilled Laura has accepted this call and look forward to a great future for St Christopher’s under her leadership. She will begin her work in June, providing intentional overlap with our wonderful interim directors, Helen and Rick Hargreaves, to support a strong camping season and a seamless leadership transition.”
 
Located on 314 acres of beach, maritime forest, and undisturbed salt marsh, St. Christopher Camp & Conference Center was first created through the gift of land to the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of South Carolina beginning in 1938. Initially created as a summer camp for disadvantaged boys, St. Christopher has grown into a year-round camp and conference facility. In addition, the Barrier Island Environmental Education Program has operated since 1981, providing an amazing outdoor education experience for school children.
 
Ordained to the priesthood in December 2020, Rev. Laura began serving at St. Stephen’s, Charleston, in October 2020. She looks forward to this next step in her ministry. “I am both humbled and honored by the bishop's call to serve as executive director at St. Christopher Camp & Conference Center in this new season for their ministry and for our diocese,” said the Rev. Rezac. “Through my work on the Steering Committee, I have come to know and deeply appreciate the hardworking people who serve this beloved institution with such grace, and I have come to love the land itself as a 'thin place' where generations of South Carolinians have experienced the presence of God in nature and in community. I am both thrilled and grateful to accept this call from our bishop.”
 
With a lifelong love of the outdoors, Rev. Laura grew up spending summers as a camper, and later as a counselor, at Camp Pisgah, a Girl Scout Camp in western North Carolina. She received a bachelor’s degree from Agnes Scott College and a Master of Science in chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill. While in graduate school for chemistry, and later as a visiting lecturer at UNC, she discerned a call to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. She graduated from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific with a Master of Divinity in 2020. She formerly served as a youth minister at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, NC, where she oversaw the Episcopal Youth Community, taught confirmation classes, and led mission trips, outdoor adventures, pilgrimages, and retreats of all kinds.
 
Prior to joining St. Stephen’s, Rev. Laura served as a seminarian and transitional deacon at St. Andrew’s On-the-Sound in Wilmington, NC. She also has extensive teaching experience as a university lecturer, middle school teacher, and informal educator, with a keen interest in Christian formation of children and adolescents. Originally from western North Carolina, Rev. Laura studied in Japan for three semesters during college, and spent time in South Africa as a seminarian. She is married to Chris Rezac and they have one four-legged child, a gangly Doberman named Ichabod Crane. Laura and Chris enjoy exploring state parks, sea kayaking, camping, taking fun expeditions, and cooking for friends and family.
 
Rev. Laura’s final day with St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Charleston will be Sunday, June 4. She will begin working full time at St. Christopher Camp & Conference Center on June 5, 2023, serving alongside the Rev. Helen and Rick Hargreaves (interim directors) through the end of August. View the announcement from St. Stephen’s, Charleston, at this link.

As we continue in Holy Week on this Maundy Thursday, Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley shares an Easter message with the diocese in the video above. 

In the video she references a Chrism Eucharist held Tuesday at Grace Church Cathedral and attended by many clergy of the diocese who came to renew their ordination vows and fellowship with one another during this sacred week. 

In this message, Bishop Ruth references the Old Testament reading for the Tuesday in Holy Week, which is the following:

​In her video, she also references speaking last week to members of the South Carolina state legislature in opposition to specific bills currently being considered by either the state House and/or Senate. Learn more, and view one video of her testimony, on our News Blog at this link.

On March 29, 2023, Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley traveled to our state capitol to speak before members of the state legislature as they consider bills currently before the House and/or Senate. 

She was allowed to speak directly to subcommittees against two of the three bills against which she wanted to voice her opposition. A video of her testimony against Senate bill S.623 is below, and the text of her remarks against the other two bills is below as well.

Testimony of The Rt. Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley
To the Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee
Against Senate Bill 623
March 29, 2023

Thank you, Chair and Members of the Committee, My name is Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, and I serve as Bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina—the lower and coastal parts of this beautiful state. I am here to speak in opposition to Senate Bill 623 because it creates hardship and pain for our transgender and gender non-binary citizens by establishing obstacles that hinder their efforts to identify themselves accurately in official documents of the state.

And because, more broadly, I believe it sets the stage for discrimination later in life, in a society where all subsequent official documentation, such as passports and drivers licenses are based off of the primary document of the birth certificate.

Senate Bill 623 also rejects the possibility of any nonbinary identity. And, it uses definitions that are unclear or problematic, including using a definition of “gender change” itself as something that can only occur due to clerical error or within one year of birth.

Initial biological identity at birth is ambiguous for physical, hormonal, genetic, or other reasons close to 1% of the time, which affects millions of people. This bill fails to recognize that in some cases the consequences of gender assignment do not emerge for several years.

This bill narrows options rather than creating them. It makes life harder for people who already have a hard path, in order to bolster the comfort of some who do not understand gender difference. There is no reason for any of this. I don’t think this bill is about love.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church says, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” So, I say, let’s be about love.

We have enough suffering; we don’t need to legislate more.
​
In the Episcopal church, we promise to respect the dignity of every human being.We join with our transgender and gender nonbinary siblings and their loved ones in opposing government interference in their lives that compromises their dignity and creates suffering. With them, we ask you to vote NO on Senate Bill 623. Be about love.

Testimony of The Rt. Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley
To the Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee
Against Senate Bill 627
March 29, 2023

Thank you, Chair and Members of the Committee, My name is Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, and I serve as Bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina—the lower and coastal parts of this beautiful state.

I am here to speak in opposition to Senate Bill 627 because it creates hardship and pain for our transgender youth and their parents by creating obstacles to their efforts to obtain the care these youth need from medical professionals.

This bill makes an already challenging journey much more difficult by taking options away, even when everyone directly involved agrees that these options would be the best choice for a particular youth.

From decades of experience in ministry, I have come to know transgender youth and been witness to their courage. I have sat with youth and families in enough situations to understand that often it is very clear that a person is transgender before adulthood. To create a law that denies this experience and delays time sensitive, much needed medical care creates avoidable suffering.

In addition, this bill puts teachers in the untenable position of outing trans or possibly trans youth to their parents even when doing so might put the youth at risk. In some cases, such disclosures could put these youth at risk of physical, psychological, or sexual violence or of being turned out into the streets to face a myriad of dangers.

I do not think this bill is about love.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church says, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” So, I say, let’s be about love.

We have enough suffering; we don’t need to legislate more.
​
In the Episcopal church, we promise to respect the dignity of every human being. We join with our transgender and gender nonbinary siblings and their loved ones in opposing government interference in their lives that compromises their dignity and creates suffering. With them, we ask you to vote NO on Senate Bill 627. Be about love.

​Testimony of The Rt. Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley
To the K-12 Subcommittee of The Education Committee
Against House Bill 3728
March 29, 2023

Thank you, Chair and Members of the Committee, My name is Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, and I serve as Bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina—the lower and coastal parts of this beautiful state.

I am here to speak in opposition to House Bill 3728 because it compromises the education of our children and youth by threatening the ability of public educators to teach the full truth. In addition, it subjects educators to interference in their teaching, burdens them with a cumbersome complaint process, and risks the loss of state funding.

I have recently returned from a visit to the Legacy Museum and lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. While there, I was utterly flooded by the sheer magnitude of the numbers of lives destroyed, the countless families ripped apart, the unspeakable horrors of physical torture and mental anguish imposed by those who enslaved on their fellow human beings.

The very idea that we would be more concerned to create laws that shield us from the deepest possible understanding of how these horrors came to be than to create laws that would foster such understanding boggles my mind.

In a state that was the entry point to nearly half of all enslaved people and where indigenous people were driven out violently from their homeland, it is deeply troubling that we are more concerned to protect sensibilities of those who may disagree with particular concepts or approaches to our hard history than to engage the pain of those who continue to experience the impacts of our long legacy of racism.

To heal this land, we must speak the truth in love to one another. I do not believe this bill fosters such loving truth telling. This is not a bill about love.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church says, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” So, I say, let’s be about love.
​
We have enough suffering; we don’t need to legislate more. I urge you to vote NO on House bill 3728. Be about love.