Posted on 03/20/2006 3:54:59 PM PST by sionnsar
This is going to screw up a good many office pools but two more names have jumped into the ECUSA Presiding Bishop race:
Two more bishops have been nominated by petition for consideration as the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, bringing the total number of nominees to seven.
Bishop Charles Edward Jenkins III of Louisiana and Bishop Francisco Duque-Gomez of Colombia announced their intention to accept nomination at the House of Bishops meeting at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Bishops J. Neil Alexander of Atlanta, Edwin F. Gulick, Jr., of Kentucky, Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada, and Henry N. Parsley Jr. of Alabama were nominated in January by the Joint Nominating Committee for the Election of the Presiding Bishop. Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington was nominated by petition in February.
This suggests two things to me. Nobody at all was excited about the original field. And the candidate that I previously considered the prohibitive favorite, Schori, is not terribly popular with her colleagues even though these additional candidates may just assure Schori's election. If most "moderate" votes are split between three or four candidates while the radicals coalesce around Schori, the Nevada bishop may just get enough votes to give her the Big Miter.
Although Duque-Gomez must be considered the longest of long shots, his election actually wouldn't surprise me. An organization as anti-American as ECUSA may just jump at the chance to elect a non-American as its head and identify itself even more with the United Nations crowd. The fact that Duque-Gomez might greatly help ECUSA with the Hispanic community, with which it is zealous to identify itself, while cutting a bit of ground out from under Third World orthodox bishops might make a vote for the Colombian awfully attactive to a great many people.
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