"It would be a bad legacy." Stand on women priests eclipses strides made in Episcopal Diocese

Episcopal Bishop Jack Iker says he is treated with warmth and respect when he visits the parishes of the Fort Worth Diocese.

Fellow bishops greet Iker one of three ways: with cordiality, with open rudeness, or with a condescending arm around his shoulder and a little sarcasm.

"Oh, Jack, how are you, you poor, sick soul," they say. "It must be awful to be hated."

Iker's well-known opposition to ordaining women as priests -- which has been church law since 1976 -- makes some Episcopalians seethe. They say Iker's attitude belongs in the Dark Ages. Iker says that his position is much older than that, stretching back through 2,000 years of priesthood.

On Sunday, the diocese will honor Iker with a celebration at St. Vincent's Episcopal Cathedral Church in Bedford. But 10 years after his consecration as bishop -- and by his reckoning, almost halfway through his tenure here -- Iker doesn't want his work as leader of the diocese overshadowed by church politics.

Iker, 54, is even more concerned that Jesus Christ's message of love and the duty of Christians to spread the Gospel can get lost in the political fray.

"It would be a bad legacy to be remembered as the bishop who didn't ordain women," said Iker, who is one of three U.S. Episcopal bishops who refuse to do so. "That's always a possibility. I'd rather be, obviously, remembered as the bishop who turned the diocese around."

Since Iker became bishop, the diocese has bucked the denomination's overall trend of losing members, its 56 churches steadily growing to about 20,000 parishioners. In 1999, the diocese raised more than $4 million to build a diocesan center and renovate its retreat, Camp Crucis in Granbury.

Parishioners have also reached out to Christians in the drought-plagued African nation of Malawi. A group headed by the diocese recently received a $75,000 grant from the Grapevine Rotary Club for famine relief. The diocese has also helped build an orphanage in northern Mexico, Iker said.

New congregations are being founded in the diocese for the first time since the early 1980s, including an all-African church in Arlington, Iker said.

"Those things are wonderful," said Katie Sherrod, a member of the Episcopal Women's Caucus, which advocates women priests. "Think of what the potential could be, if we weren't eyeing one another over this issue" of women priests.

Sherrod, an outspoken critic of Iker's stand, said he has made the diocese a magnet for disgruntled ultraconservative traditionalist priests with nowhere else to go. Iker said that nearly the opposite is true. Most applicants for a post in the 24-county Fort Worth Diocese are simply looking for work, he said. But some priests find it hard to move on because of the diocese's traditionalist reputation, he said.

Despite Iker's ban on women priests, Sherrod said they still lead the Mass at some local churches. Priests can stay in a diocese for up to two months without permission from a bishop. One woman priest was recently brought to a Fort Worth church for 59 days, Sherrod said.

"No one wants to publicly embarrass the bishop, so it's quietly done," she said.

At Iker's consecration in 1993, he faced silent protesters but made a point of shaking their hands. Iker said he inherited a deeply divided diocese when he succeeded Bishop Clarence Pope.

"I tried to turn around the diocese at that time," Iker said. "Not by avoiding the things we disagreed about, but by saying, 'OK, we don't agree on that, but there's lots of things we do agree about, primarily [Jesus'] commandment about love.' "

But the Rev. Ryan Reed, dean of St. Vincent's Cathedral, said Iker is not a cause of discord but a symptom of larger, national problems, including intolerance of other perspectives.

"The Episcopal church is in quite a bit of a mess trying to hold all these views, and it can't," said Reed, who was ordained by Iker. "They don't want the traditional view and kind of push it out."

Reed said he's been at national conventions where he has had amiable exchanges right up until people notice the words Fort Worth Diocese on his name tag.

"I've had people in the middle of a conversation, when they finally saw my name tag, just walk away," he said.

Some Episcopalians are concerned that the same thing may happen to the conservative elements of the Anglican church, said David Hein, religion professor at Hood College in Frederick, Md., who studies the Anglican church.

Hein, author of the forthcoming book The Episcopalians, supports women's ordination. While there is room in the church for Iker's views, Hein said, the perspective of many is that the issue should be moot.

He said he doesn't believe that Iker is "anti-woman" but that he is committed to his theology.

"There are a handful [of bishops] that are left that oppose women's ordination," Hein said. "I don't think it's a huge threat to the church. And it makes the church more interesting to have these traditionalist views."

But Iker said traditionalists have been harassed to the point of leaving the church. He pointed to the resignation of the Rev. Samuel Edwards, who faced an ecclesiastical trial after being accused of violating church policy and teachings in another diocese. Edwards was a national advocate against ordaining women priests.

"You know, I've found that so-called liberals can be as bigoted and prejudiced as so-called traditional conservatives," Iker said. "And it's not bigotry based upon race or ethnic origin. It's bigotry based upon theology."

Katie Sherrod was a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, fired in the late 80s for plaigarizing part of a column.

Iker's done a good job, from what I hear. He's lost two parishes and six priests to the Catholic Diocese.

Jesus was not a cringing, cowering appeaser. If he had wanted a female apostle, he would have appointed one.

He didn't.

And he wouldn't have worried one whit what the "male dominated culture" would have said if he had wanted to appoint one.

"Reed said he's been at national conventions where he has had amiable exchanges right up until people notice the words Fort Worth Diocese on his name tag. "I've had people in the middle of a conversation, when they finally saw my name tag, just walk away," he said."

Note that it's the "tolerant" types acting like that.

"You know, I've found that so-called liberals can be as bigoted and prejudiced as so-called traditional conservatives," Iker said. "And it's not bigotry based upon race or ethnic origin. It's bigotry based upon theology."

Hey, woah, woah, woah. Who says traditional conservatives are likely to be bigoted and prejudiced? "Can be as bigoted?" Try, "Invariably are bigoted, in contrast to traditional conservatives, who are rational about their well-though-out positions."

"It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals."
Felix Frankfurter

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