The church has sent conflicting messages. No one doubts that many gays and lesbians, attracted by the church’s “gilt without guilt” atmosphere, have joined the Episcopal clergy. Integrity, the church’s gay and lesbian caucus, estimates that anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of Episcopal deacons, priests and bishops are homosexual. In urban areas like San Francisco and Chicago, gay clerics are believed by many congregants to outnumber the heterosexuals. In 1994 homosexual couples won the right – with their bishop’s approval – to live together in housing provided by General Theological Seminary in New York. Even so, the church’s House of Bishops has repeatedly declared that holy matrimony is the only moral context for sexual relations, and that homosexual clergy should remain celibate. “Bishop Righter is advocating the violent overthrow of Christian teaching, morality and holy matrimony,” says Bishop William Wantland of Eau Claire, Wis., one of the 10 “presenters” against Righter. “This is so serious that it threatens the very existence of the Episcopal Church.”
But opponents, chiefly Bishop John Spong of the Newark, N.J., diocese, have repeatedly challenged the demand for celibacy as impractical, unloving and hypocritical. They can note that in 1991 the House of Bishops itself rejected (93 to 85) a resolution asking all bishops, priests and deacons to refrain from sexual intercourse outside marriage. “This is a mean-spirited, narrow-minded bunch of schoolyard bullies who are scared stiff of the future,” says Righter of his mitered accusers. “Instead of moving to the future, they are trying to take everybody back to the past.”
In many ways, Righter is a stand-in for a whole network of like-minded bishops. Integrity claims that at least 42 other bishops have ordained men and women whom they knew at the time to be living with a same-sex partner. As an assistant bishop of Newark in 1990, Righter ordained Stopfel at the request of his own superior, Bishop Spong. The previous year, Spong himself presided at a stagy ordination of a “monogamous” homosexual, Robert Williams, who promptly embarrassed his benefactor by declaring monogamy to be as inhibiting and unnatural as celibacy itself. Since then, Spong has upped the ante by writing a book claiming that Saint Paul himself was a closeted, self-hating homosexual, and by advocating church blessings for cohabiting couples. The split is basic: traditional bishops cite Scripture as the source of doctrine; Spong and his allies emphasize the need to be inclusive.
Like most Anglicans, the Episcopal Church has never cared much for doctrinal precision nor shown much will to discipline dissenting bishops. The only Episcopal prelate deposed for heresy was William Montgomery Brown, who favored communism over Christianity in the 1920s and insisted that no one in the Episcopal Church took – or need take – the articles of the faith seriously. Bishop James Pike, who died in 1969, rejected orthodox Christianity (he dismissed the Trinity as a “committee god”) but was never brought to trial. And in recent years, the revisionist Spong has written a series of Brown-like books trashing everything from the Virgin Mary to the Gospels’ account of Jesus’ resurrection.
Heresy, it seems, is hardly possible in the Episcopal Church when doubt can be construed as heroic virtue. Even so, Righter’s trial threatens to be messy and expensive – and probably fruitless. The Episcopal Church accepted women priests only after a few maverick bishops, defying church law, ordained enough of them to force a change in legislation. Those who believe in gay marriages and clergy intend to do the same. Indeed, one of the nine trial judges, Bishop Frederick Borsch of Los Angeles, recently allowed the ordination of yet another practicing homosexual. Traditional Episcopalians have their own scenario. Rather than submit to “apostate” bishops, they are creating a network of orthodox bishops, parishes and dioceses to preserve the traditional faith. It’s the old Anglican way: division without schism.
