Since 2004, eight Episcopal congregations have split apart or left the Central Florida Diocese because of the direction of the national church body. Mark Pinsky, the Orlando Sentinel’s ace religion reporter, wrote that 500 members and the ministerial staff of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach are leaving their historic church building to form a new congregation separate from the Episcopal Church.
Much of the article deals with the logistics of the split — how the diocese at first accepted a $5 million offer for the building before deciding to keep the church building for the remaining 200 members. But from the headline on down, Pinsky also emphasizes “gay issues” which he says are the reason for the split:
Those who are leaving insist the issue is about adherence to biblical principles, but the precipitating events revolve around the denomination’s positions on homosexuality. They opposed the 2003 consecration of openly gay the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, and what they say is the national denomination’s permissiveness toward congregations that bless same-sex unions.
Read that first line again. Why use the word “but” there?
The group of people publicly “insist” that they are leaving for a certain reason. Is the reporter disagreeing with them? Does he know better than the sources why they are picking up and starting a new congregation?
If that’s not the case, I’m still confused by the use of the word “but.” I assume that those who are leaving might view the denomination’s positions on homosexuality as somewhat related to adherence to biblical principles. Perhaps Pinsky, who is a great religion reporter, could ask those who are leaving which biblical principles they differ with The Episcopal Church over. That’s how Barbara Karkabi of the Houston Chronicle handled her similar story last month about a breakaway parish. She interviewed Rev. Stan Gerber and highlighted his last sermon at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Tomball:
From an “orthodox” point of view, Gerber said, “The culture has begun to influence the church, rather than the church influencing the culture.”
Conservative Episcopalians point to 2003 as the breaking point. That’s when V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest living with his male partner, was confirmed as the bishop of New Hampshire by the church’s General Assembly. … Robinson’s appointment was a trigger that caused people to start examining the church and its beliefs, said departing vestry member John Pegues.
“For most of the people here in this congregation, the key issue really revolves around the authority of Scripture,” Pegues said. “Is it the word of God? Or is it written by man and therefore can be reinterpreted or set aside in favor of a better understanding?”
In his farewell sermon Sunday, Gerber said he could “no longer stand by and adhere to false teachings of the leadership of the national church.”
Karkabi’s story shows that the departing Episcopalians see the church’s recent significant changes on the issue of homosexuality as an example of how the church is being influenced by the culture instead of the authority of Scripture.
 | Posted at 2:13 pm |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (14) |
May 7, 2008, at 2:52 pm
(cough, cough)
tmatt trio territory. You just can’t avoid these things.
The key: Are ancient doctrines being changed/liberalized/modernized/reformed? The newspaper has to get the facts down on that issue. You have to report the two points of view, but this is a fight over ancient doctrines — not just an issue of sexual politics.
May 8, 2008, at 7:05 am
Is the reporter disagreeing with them? In a word, yes.
May 8, 2008, at 9:55 am
First, as full disclosure, I am a veteran of the Anglican wars, in North Florida…now happily re-Romanized.
Mollie, your point is strong. But (oops) I wonder if in some way, folks like Mark Pinsky aren’t picking up intuitively on a (my opinion) subtle hypocrisy in the conservative Anglican ranks. Anglican “reasserters” (to use Kendall Harmon’s nomenclature for conservatives) are projecting back to all of the problems in Anglicanism over the last 80 years or so: Liberalization on contraception and abortion, women’s ordination, liturgical changes (the 1979 Book of Common Prayer), and most of all a general weakening of Christology and soteriology. The problem is that they didn’t start to complain about those things in any kind of meaningful way (that is, enough to break away to Rome or Antioch—or Lagos—over) until General Convention 2003 saw the approval of Gene Robinson’s episcopal ordination and the first serious stab at same-sex unions. It was, quite frankly, an epic case of the frog in the kettle.
So, Anglican “reappraisers” (Kendall’s word for progressives) have a point when they smell that hypocrisy. And we might therefore forgive (or at least understand) folks in the MSM like Pinsky for showing their “but”. No, I didn’t say all that just to make a pun, but I couldn’t resist. The point is, we waited too long to make a fuss, and it’s hard for reappraisers and those outside Anglicanism not to see it as hypocrisy and homophobia.
Now, I may be attributing far too much insight and intuition to folks like Pinsky. BUT, I don’t think so.
May 8, 2008, at 10:39 am
Mollie: the Schoolhouse Rock reference is very clever — but your little one is way too young for you to know this as a parent. Did you watch it when it was new?
May 8, 2008, at 10:43 am
I don’t know when Schoolhouse Rock came out, but it was definitely around by the time I was watching my Saturday morning ‘toons!
May 8, 2008, at 11:29 am
Franksta,
As someone who has oscillated between PECUSA and continuing churches over the past 15 years, I think you are over-analyzing the situation. Schism is morally and theologically hard — for all the reason that Peter Toon has asserted. Morally, the parishes feel they have a right to their buildings, but in many states legally they do not — and thus leaving means starting from scratch. These people are deeply conflicted, as spending energy on fighting their bishop or the national TEC is energy not spent on making and nurturing Christians.
Also, many parishes have had a certain amount of autonomy from national theology. There was diocesan local option for 4 (then 3) dioceses on women’s ordination.
During the 1970s and 1980s there was a certain amount of co-existence between the traditionalists and the modernizers (even the new PB and women’s ordination caused some to leave in 1977). My reading is that modernizers are now trying to consolidate power rather than share it. For example, since Bp. Mathes took over the Diocese of San Diego in 2005 — demanding that parishes retitle their land in the diocesan name — eight of his 51 parishes have left, leaving only three traditionalist parishes.
Just because the frog sits in the water for a long long time, doesn’t mean we should be suspicious of him when he finally gets out. (As long as he’s smart enough not to go back).
May 8, 2008, at 12:45 pm
I think Mollie has a point. I know Mark, and he usually doesn’t say such things unless he has some background in them. But a keyword search of the Orlando Sentinel’s database says nothing about homosexuality in the previous 49 stories on Trinity Episcopal. Nor did a follow-up piece today (Thursday) mention it. So there should have been some attribution for the claim that it was really about gays.
May 8, 2008, at 12:45 pm
Jay,
Thanks for your comments. I’m not suspicious of any person (or parish or diocese) who chooses to leave at any time. But I’m only able to judge from the rhetoric on the ground where I was at the time. In my town, 5 of the 8 TEC parishes split between 2004 and 2006. 2 of the splits were “total,” that is, the TEC parish was declared a loss by the diocese and closed.
But there was just something about the rhetoric that wasn’t completely convincing. Yeah, we knew we needed to get out, but there wasn’t any real remorse or repentance about why we didn’t get out sooner. And it just smacked of something when clergy and vestry were pressed for signs of “Biblical principles” that TEC had violated BESIDES homosexuality, and immediately people jumped to issues that were 30-40 years old, or more. There is not a viable Continuing Church presence in my town, so the mini-schism that happened in the 1970s essentially passed us by.
So the more people professed that it WASN’T about homosexuality, the harder it was for rational people to believe. Yes, it is ultimately about Scripture (and Tradition for some of us), but the fact that it took the H-bomb to move so many people to act is something that needs to be examined more closely, particularly by any Reasserters still clinging to TEC.
May 8, 2008, at 1:02 pm
Franksta, I have observed my Episcopal friends from my Lutheran place, and it seems to me that many stayed in the ECUSA/ TEC for a long time while being soothed by “can’t we all just get along” language that came from the liberal side, insisting that their pluralism would allow room for all. This led to a slow decline that took four decades, until the liberal side had enough votes to drop that ruse and push for the homosexuals’ agenda. So much of the TEC is now filled with universalists and others even further from their traditional doctrines that compromise is no longer a reasonable expectation. It is very, very sad. We are making a fine Lutheran home to many Episcopal refugee families that do not have an Anglican parish in reach.
May 8, 2008, at 3:03 pm
MJBubba, God bless you. There is a WELS congregation and 2 LCMS in my town. If I had been drawn to one of them rather than Anglicanism when I made my trek back to the liturgical/sacramental life 7 years ago, I might still be there.
My TEC parish was the first in town to split. I remember the rector saying repeatedly, “it’s not about homosexuality,” but his words rang very hollow. He kept talking about the evil decline in TEC orthodoxy over the last 40 years, and I just wanted to scream, “then why did you receive Orders 11 years ago?”
My point in all this is that Mark Pinsky’s “but” was not a slip, but rather intrinsic to the Anglican debate. And I think the fact that he distinguishes between core theological principles and “precipitating events” is actually right on the money.
May 8, 2008, at 10:45 pm
franksta wrote:
Until recently there was nowhere else to go and remain within the Anglican Communion. Recently the African archbishops have begun offering institutional shelter for breakaway Episcopal parishes — and they have made no bones about the fact Gene Robinson was the last straw for them.
May 9, 2008, at 12:03 pm
Of course VGR was the last straw for the African provinces. They haven’t drunk the kool-aid on moral issues that TEC has. Granted, some African provinces have women clergy and other irregularities, but I’m speaking as a whole.
As for remaining in the Communion, that was always a weird issue around here. There is a lot of confused ecclesiology. On one hand, there’s a pretty heavy congregationalist streak in a lot of parishes. OTOH, some people wanted the Archbishop of Canterbury to act like a pope—which of course he is not—and rescue TEC from itself. Overall, there was a desire to remain in the Anglican Communion, just not a strong desire to remain in communion with Canterbury—and that’s a problem. I think the writing is on the wall that sometime soon—perhaps even as early as Lambeth this year—one will have to make a choice between being in communion with Canterbury and being in communion with Lagos (metaphorical for whatever form Anglican orthodoxy takes).
May 9, 2008, at 9:08 pm
I think it’s more likely that they will choose to be in communion with Canterbury but not with each other. Rowen will be in the same position as the Queen being the monarch of the UK, Canada and Australia even though those are independent countries.
May 10, 2008, at 11:43 am
That describes the current situation. Whether it can continue is anyone’s guess.
From an ecclesiological standpoint, it’s incoherent, but, hey, these are Anglicans we are talking about. As long as the marmite and butter spread on the crumpets, and the tea stays hot, they may just work it out.