Posted on 04/05/2008 10:49:29 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
From the time Anglican pilgrims arrived in Jamestown, it's as if America and the Episcopal Church have been soul mates – for better or for worse.
Now come the country's culture wars over sexuality, conservative versus liberal, change versus tradition. And the 2.4-million-member denomination that has given us more U.S. presidents than any other, along with its first-ever woman leader, is not being spared.
Nearly five years after a gay priest was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, the fallout continues. One diocese has seceded from the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Dozens of congregations, including nine of the 50 churches in the San Diego diocese, also have broken apart.
“I think we live in an increasingly polarized society and these particular actions in the church echo that,” said Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who in 2006 was elected the presiding bishop – chief spiritual leader – of the U.S. church.
Jefferts Schori argues the number of congregations leaving the church is not large – roughly 1 percent of the 7,600 congregations, by her count. “It gets a lot of press and a lot of play, but it's a relatively small portion of the church,” said Jefferts Schori, who is in San Diego this weekend for a pair of public talks.
Jefferts Schori, who has visited about 50 of the church's 110 dioceses, was in California last weekend under much different circumstances. The occasion: a special convention in Lodi to begin rebuilding the diocese that left, San Joaquin. In December, a majority of the 7,500 Episcopalians, and their bishop, voted to realign with an Anglican province in South America.
Thursday evening, settled in a chair next to San Diego Bishop James Mathes, Jefferts Schori said these secessions go against historical Anglicanism, a worldwide affiliation of 38 independent provinces with 77 million members.
“Voting to leave is the denial of the ability to live in tension with people who don't agree with you about everything,” she said.
“You don't all have to profess exactly the same understandings of the central tenets of the faith,” she added. “What's important is to worship together.”
While the Episcopal Church may be in the floodlights of publicity, religious historian David Holmes points out that it is not the only denomination going through these struggles.
“Viewed from the inside, every major denomination in the United States is facing roughly the same challenges,” said Holmes, who teaches at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
The Episcopal Church has seen similar exits before, the most recent coming in the 1970s after the denomination agreed to ordain women.
The Rev. Keith Acker, who left the Episcopal church in Alpine in 2005 to start a conservative Anglican congregation in the same town, traces the beginning of his dissatisfaction to that time.
Then came the votes by the General Convention in 2003 allowing the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay, noncelibate priest, to become bishop of New Hampshire. It was a “precipitating event” for Acker, and others who consider homosexuality biblically unacceptable.
Acker is critical of Jefferts Schori's decision to fight seceding churches over property ownership. Three disputes are in San Diego County, where congregations in Fallbrook, Oceanside and Ocean Beach realigned elsewhere in the communion but have refused to leave the buildings.
Jefferts Schori said she has no choice. “These are assets that the Episcopal Church has been given by generations before us for mission and ministry in the name of this church, and it's really not up to us to just shoo them away.”
The Rev. Michael Russell, rector of All Souls' Episcopal Church in Point Loma, gives her high marks. “I think she's doing a great job, given the hand she was dealt,” he said.
A Episcopalian, Russell believes the core of the battle is “over the nature and sources of authority.
He adds: “The fight is between those who say you always have to go to Scripture first on any question and those who say you go to Scripture for salvation, but God also reveals things to us in nature and human reason.”
Jefferts Schori is not a biblical literalist. Take the six-day story of Creation in Genesis, for example. “It's too good a story to believe it literally,” she said. “It's got too much meaning to be boxed up in that small of an understanding.”
Seeing Jesus as the only way to redemption also “puts God in a very small box,” she said.
“Most Christians believe that Jesus died for the whole world. If you believe that, then to say that some people are beyond redemption would appear to deny that,” she said.
Either way, she adds, “I think it is up to God, not for us, to judge.”
She advocates for the inclusion of gays and lesbians. “If we were focused on what holy living looks like, generally, without focusing on the gender of the people involved, I think we would be a lot farther down the road,” she said.
And she maintains news outlets are way too focused on the threat of schism. “The media loves conflict,” she said. “Feeding people in a soup kitchen or building a school in Haiti ranks at a lower priority in much of the public interest.”
Still, the attention is not expected to fade soon.
This summer, the once-a-decade meeting of bishops around the world will be held in England. Jefferts Schori and San Diego Bishop Mathes will be there – but bishops from at least five provinces in Africa and South America are threatening to boycott.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion's spiritual leader, has excluded New Hampshire Bishop Robinson from the Lambeth Conference, along with a conservative U.S. priest who was made a bishop in the Anglican Church of Nigeria to oversee breakaway churches.
Later this month, Robinson is due out with a book about the church fight over gay rights.
“Will there be a split? I don't know,” Robinson writes in “In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God.”
“But I know that we have to hold our beloved presiding bishop's feet to the fire, so that she makes good on her pledge for the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church,” he writes.
Jefferts Schori, who said she hasn't read Robinson's book, is asked what will happen by the end of her nine-year term.
“The issues around homosexuality are a conversation this church has been having for 40 years,” she said. “I would hope that we're some distance farther down the road eight years from now than we are today. Do I think the conversation's going to be finished? I doubt it.”
Seeing Jesus as the only way to redemption also “puts God in a very small box,” she said.
Words fail me, except thank goodness for non-denominational gospel-preaching churches.
If not Him, who then, Katie?
““You don’t all have to profess exactly the same understandings of the central tenets of the faith,” she added. “What’s important is to worship together.””
The woman is a screaming heretic.
And yes, Jesus is the way to eternal life, not Mohammad or Confucius.
“.. puts God in a very small box,” she said.”
yes, Katharine, that’s right. The way to the Kingdom is through a narrow gate.
Of course the real question is this - Which side have I fallen into league with, the right one or the wrong one?
We should all ask ourselves that question and frequently.
Which is the point I was making.
The problem is when the two clash...
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