Saturday, July 26, 1997

Amid deep division, Episcopals elect liberal

By Mike McManus

PHILADELPHIA - Meeting in historic Christ Church where The Episcopal Church was organized in 1789, the church's bishops elected to a nine-year term as Presiding Bishop, Chicago Bishop Frank Griswold III, a man who has ordained homosexuals - though his denomination has not yet approved that step.

He is thus a revisionist - the polar opposite of a biblically orthodox leader. He leads the church's Standing Liturgical Commission which just issued a report recommending a series of liturgies to be used in blessing same-sex "marriages." The proposal was voted down in the House of Deputies by a one vote margin.

Yet he has such a warm, open, gracious manner that most conservative leaders at the church's triennial General Convention were willing to give him the benefit of doubt, for now.

"We congratulate Bishop Griswold upon his election," said Dallas Bishop James Stanton, president of the conservative umbrella group, the American Anglican Council. "We hope to work with him in the task of strengthening and renewing the Episcopal Church."

John Guernsey, an ACC board member, and a Deputy (delegate) to the convention, sounded like a boy with his nose pressed to the window, longing to be invited to the birthday party: "What the Episcopal Church desperately needs is biblically based reconciliation and healing. We are looking to be fully included in the life of our church under Bishop Griswold. We pray that Bishop Griswold will give us hope for such healing."

For 12 years, Griswold's predecessor, Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, has stiff-armed the biblically orthodox, as he did in his final speech, criticizing those who oppose ordaining gay clergy and same-sex "marriages" as being "diverted by fear, and let me name it, by hate" which has come "from the evil from which we daily pray for God's deliverance ... Some of themost extreme among us have used the disagreement within our body to foment difficulty and advance themselves and their causes. This is not of God. Surely, this is not of God ... It is time to move past using literalistic readings of the Bible to create prejudices against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters."

Griswold played his role brilliantly, eschewing such stridency and impugning of motives.

In brief remarks to the convention after his election, he quoted Bishop Don Helder Camara, a martyred Catholic from Brazil that begins: 'The bishop belongs to all," ending with the assertion the bishop's door "must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone."

Later, before the press, Griswold recalled that Jesus called Matthew, a tax collector for the Romans to be one of his disciples as well as Simon the Zealot, who was committed to overthrowing Roman rule, adding, "The truth is larger than any one perspective."

His subliminal message: the church is always divided, but can be led to unity.

Perhaps. But conservatives felt so isolated within the church, that when six candidates were nominated for the PB position, they could support none. So they nominated one of their own, Ohio Bishop Herbert Thompson, a conservative black evangelical. On the first ballot, Thompson actually led Griswold, 89 to 86, a snapshot of how divided Episcopalians are.

Another snapshot. In a House of Bishops debate on whether to authorize rituals for same-sex unions, N.J. Bishop Joe Morris Doss proposed continued dialogue for three years. A conservative bishop asked if Doss' motion passed, that "we would be imposing a moratorium" on same sex blessings. After a moment of stunned silence, Doss said, "I'll answer the question: No."

To his credit, Griswold quickly agreed to meet with the American Anglican Council. He is not a Browning "in-your-face" revisionist. He genuinely wants conservatives to remain within the fold, and may treat them fairly enough that they'll remain involved. But as one Deputy put it, "I dread going home and answering my church's question: 'How could you allow this to happen?"

Jon Schuler, General Secretary of the North American Missionary Society, which has planted 12 new orthodox Episcopalian churches in four years and is working on 27 more, sighs, "I find myself unable to take communion at this convention. The church's drift of several decades is now moving rapidly away from a solid foundation in orthodoxy. We are at a major crisis point.

"There is a huge commitment to hang in there. We are family. But with the Presiding Bishop's ordaining of non-celibate homosexuals, a line has been crossed. This is not the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ that this church has received."