Dean's Letter

January 2008

From The Very Reverend David Bird, Ph.D., Dean and Rector

" Our call is not to divide, nor to conquer. It is to stay together under Christ."

On Christmas Day, overcome by nostalgia, I brought up the web site of a parish near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I served as rector for almost ten years. The last Sunday before I moved to San Jose, I worshiped there–only my second visit in the nearly fourteen years since I had left.

The church is classically built in light colored stone and always gave off a sense of safety and permanence. Nearly a third of my ordained ministry had been spent there.

Will I be able to go again? If the current Bishop of Pittsburgh gets his way, and the diocese is very much leaning that way, my old parish may no longer be a part of the Episcopal Church. Will I ever, I wondered, be able, psychologically or pastorally, to go back to a much loved pastoral and spiritual home? Perhaps not.

The current division and rancor in the Episcopal Church are nothing less than the tragic breaking up of a family that forever belongs with each other. Sad at heart, I turned to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for solace, and I found it. One article, by a self-confessed religious conservative had so much to say to me that I hope you will forgive me for quoting passages liberally here.

On Sunday, November 11, 2007, Jerry Bowyer wrote:

My wife is a reader at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in McKeesport. This means that she sometimes leads the people in prayer, including a prayer "for Katharine, our presiding bishop; Robert and Henry, our bishops; and Jay, our priest." These are our leaders. Katharine Jefferts Schori is the elected head of the U.S. branch of the church. Robert Duncan along with his assistant, Henry Scriven, leads the diocese, and Jay Geisler is the priest at St. Stephen's in McKeesport.

This past summer, Bishop Duncan instructed my wife and hundreds of other readers in the diocese to omit the prayer for Katharine. Katharine Jefferts Schori has been a frequent target for conservatives in the U.S. church ever since she was elected presiding bishop in 2006. Coming on the heels of the installation of an active and outspoken homosexual bishop, the elevation of a woman of liberal sympathies seemed a bridge too far for many conservatives.

It appeared at the time that omitting the prayer for Katharine was a stepping stone to where the bishop was really trying to take us -- outside of the Episcopal Church. You see, to include Katharine in the prayers was to acknowledge her office, and to acknowledge her office was to acknowledge our obligation to her. Our suspicions were confirmed on Nov. 2, when the Diocese of Pittsburgh voted overwhelmingly to change its constitution to permit separation from the Episcopal Church USA.

When my wife, Susan, asked me for advice about the prayer directive, I told her that Katharine was elected lawfully under the standards of the Episcopal Church. Robert was using his authority to tell her to disregard Katharine's authority. When there is a disruption in the chain of authority, I said, "look to the highest authority." He said, "Love your enemies, pray for those who despitefully use you." If you should pray for your enemies, should you not pray even more for friends with whom you disagree?

Jerry Bowyer is very clear that he deplored the election of an openly gay and partnered bishop in the Episcopal Church. But the battle, he argues, is to be engaged within not outside the Episcopal Church. The priests who voted to leave the Episcopal Church had taken vows of loyalty to the same church.

The power of Bowyer’s argument is nowhere more apparent than in the following two paragraphs:

On Oct. 31, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA sent a letter to the bishop of Pittsburgh, directing him not to split the diocese from the denomination. Bishop Duncan replied by quoting Martin Luther, "Here I stand. I can do no other."

It's a powerful quote, but a misuse of history. Martin Luther didn't leave the Roman Catholic Church; he was kicked out. He decided to "stand" and fight. It's ironic that Bishop Duncan quoted Luther's pledge to "stand" in order to justify his intention to "walk."

There is much truth to Bowyer’s interpretation. It is up to the church to tell us that we must go. No matter the controversy we are engaged in, our call is to stay and serve God. Time may well reveal one of at least three possible solutions: a time when the tradition will right itself; or a time when we will discover that the new way is right after all; or our own death before the matter has been resolved. No matter the solution, our place is to remain within the communion of the church.

In every generation there will be significant changes in the church. Some will be of God, and some will not. There will be changes which excite us, but which the church will not ultimately receive as part of its ongoing faith. There will be changes which we don’t like but which will be received by the church as part of its teaching and we will learn to live with them. The rich tapestry which is Christianity permits a wide range of cultural, national, ethnic and social understandings of faith and ethics.

Some years ago a former bishop of California, Jim Pike, incensed some of his critics by declaring that he believed in “a big God.” I thought the expression somewhat crass when first I heard it. The longer I have been in ministry, the more I have come to understand what Bishop Pike was getting at.

The church has long taught that human beings are given both to generosity and selfishness; to good deeds and to fallen-ness. Every dollar that is spent on litigation over who owns various church properties–and millions could potentially be spent on this kind of division–will stand as sign and symbol of human selfishness and communal sin.

Our call is not to divide, nor to conquer. It is to stay together under Christ.

I want to end with further material from Bowyer’s article, not because I am comfortable with all of it, but because I want to illustrate how a conservative Episcopalian, breaking ranks with many of his allies, believes his fellow conservatives should act.

Are my fellow conservatives fully aware of the biblical and patristic teachings on schism? How do they justify a break with the Episcopal Church to which they have literally sworn loyalty? How do they justify taking Episcopal property with them? Given Paul's command to the first- century Corinthian Church not to address church issues in secular courts, how do they justify the inevitable legal battles that accompany a schism? How much will the litigation cost? Will the money come from our offerings?

There are moral questions, too. If we break with the Episcopal Church in America over gay priests, how can we then align ourselves with African bishops who tolerate polygamist priests? Paul says that a church leader is to be "the husband of one wife." Do we think that the word "husband" is inerrant but the word "one" is not?

If the Episcopal Church really has become apostate and its current leaders really are enemies of God, then how can we justify leaving the church, its resources and its sheep in their care? If not, how can we justify this separation?

Yes, there are times when it's necessary to leave one authority for another. When the New Testament writers were forced to deal with this issue, they concluded that they were compelled to obey higher authority at all times, except when it commanded them to disobey God. Roman Emperors were monstrous beasts. The church preached against them and prayed for them to repent, but Christians still obeyed the law. It wasn't until Rome ordered them to stop preaching the gospel and to offer sacrifices to Caesar that the early church was forced to disobey.

By analogy, New Hampshire can install a whole pride of gay bishops, but we don't break our oath of loyalty to the Episcopal Church until they order us to start installing them here.

Until then, the pattern of David and Jesus holds: Be faithful. Be patient. Be active in good works. And be in prayer for all in authority . . . "for Katharine, our presiding bishop; Robert and Henry, our bishops; and Jay, our priest, I pray. Lord, hear our prayer."

It is my prayer that a way will be found whereby dioceses do not break with the Episcopal Church. I admit that part of this prayer is selfish in that I would like to think that a parish where I tried to minister faithfully for almost ten years will be a place where in spirit, if not practically, I could still be able to worship, knowing it to be part of our church. Another part of me, a better part, believes that Christ commanded us to be one and that being one demands unity, not unanimity nor uniformity.

— David

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