| WASHINGTON —
Episcopalians upset by the consecration of an openly gay bishop
say they are ready to launch widespread disobedience of church
law in their plan to “replace” the national church.
A confidential memo to supporters of the American Anglican Council
— which is coordinating the opposition — said open
defiance will be inevitable if bishops do not agree to cede authority
and church property to conservatives.
The Rev. Geoff Chapman, a Pennsylvania priest who wrote the
letter, said resistance is necessary because conservatives are
being harassed and punished for their opposition to openly gay
Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
Conservative parishes that are bullied or muzzled by liberal
bishops have no choice but to fight back, even if it means playing
by a new set of rules, he said.
“When canon law is diverted from its God-given purposes,
we believe we have a fundamental obligation to resist it, and
in some cases disobey it,” Chapman, pastor of St. Stephen’s
Church in Sewickley, PA, said in an interview.
Chapman’s memo, obtained by Religion News Service, is
the most detailed plan drafted to date for conservatives’
ambition to serve as a “replacement” for the Episcopal
Church. Ultimately, they hope to be recognized by the leader of
the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams,
as the “legitimate franchise” of Anglicanism in the
United States.
The six-page letter lays out a two-phase process in which conservatives
will declare themselves in “impaired” or “damaged”
communion with liberal bishops who support Robinson or the blessing
of same-sex unions.
The first stage will be formally launched next week at a meeting
in Plano, TX, where officials from 12 dioceses will inaugurate
the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes.
“The Episcopal Church is on its way out of the Anglican
Communion and we don’t want to go with them,” Chapman
said in an interview. “We want to stay in the Anglican Communion.”
The second, more contentious phase will “probably”
start this year and involve a “faithful disobedience of
canon law on a widespread basis,” said Chapman. Some church
officials said it will also spur a spree of expensive litigation.
In real terms, the plan means conservative bishops would cross
traditional boundaries to supervise clergy, preside at confirmations
and provide administrative oversight, among other things.
The Rev. David Anderson, president of the American Anglican
Council, said two parishes in Georgia have already left to seek
oversight from a Bolivian bishop, and others in the Western United
States are seeking guidance from a Canadian bishop.
Anderson said a bishop who voted for Robinson or supports same-sex
unions is persona non grata in conservative parishes, especially
at confirmations. “The hands that were raised to vote for
either of those issues are not going to touch our children,”
he said.
Chapman said a plan currently being drafted by the church’s
top leader, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, to provide “pastoral
care” to conservative parishes is “unacceptable, fundamentally
flawed and disingenuous.”
In an interview Jan. 13, Griswold said he is committed to allowing
conservative bishops to provide “pastoral care” to
dissidents, but is not willing to grant them the power of direct
“oversight.”
“Authority belongs to the diocesan bishop,” Griswold
said flatly, appearing to leave little room for compromise.
Until now, Anderson and other conservatives have vowed to work
within the structure of the church, and downplayed threats of
an outright break with the denomination. Anderson said the memo
does not signal a change in course, but is simply a reaction to
circumstances church law never anticipated.
“Does it break the canons? No,” he said. “Does
it circumvent them? Yes.”
A church spokeswoman, the Rev. Jan Nunley, said she hoped conservative
clergy would abide by their ordination vows to uphold the “doctrine,
discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church.”
“It certainly is dismaying and divisive for them to, on
the one hand, make public statements that they abide by the canons,
and then make private statements that they intend to violate them,”
she said. |
