CONSERVATION CONGREGATION
How a Johns Island congregation chose conservation over development, preserving ten acres of land as a lasting gift to the Sea Islands community.
STORY AND P HOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL CALDWELL
Church of Our Saviour sits on Johns Island, just before Betsy Kerrison bends toward Kiawah and Seabrook. While the parkway hums with traffic, the property behind the church is situated at a quiet intersection of forest, field, and marsh. Established in the mid-1980s, Church of Our Saviour— part of the Anglican denomination— has witnessed the surrounding Sea Islands rapid growth and development. For twenty-five years, a ten-acre parcel adjacent to the church existed in a kind of pause— overgrown, unused, and without clear purpose.
When Reverend Karl Burns arrived in 2016, that land was one of the first things he noticed.“ You couldn’ t see anything beyond the first field,” he says.“ Not the second field, not the graveyard. It was all overgrown.” Clearing the vegetation revealed both the scale of the property and the question the church had largely avoided: What is this land meant to be? And what role should it play within the community?
The church itself has roots in the growth of Kiawah and Seabrook, founded by St. John’ s Parish Church in the 1980s to serve the early residential and retirement populations moving into the Sea Islands. Over the years, it has become a gathering point for a demographic that arrives seasonally, stays for extended stretches, and often returns year after year.