The worldwide Anglican Communion watches as Episcopalians at the U.S. general convention consider ratifying an openly gay bishop.
By SHARON TUBBS
Published July 31, 2003
The Rev. William McLean, of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Tampa, expresses mixed feelings about the gay-clergy issue.
Bishop John B. Lipscomb, head of the diocese that stretches from Brooksville to Marco Island, says he has received “many, many prayerful letters” on the controversy.
The Rev. William McLean thinks homosexuals are gay by nature, says they can be good Episcopal priests, and thinks long-held beliefs that God abhors homosexuality might be wrong.
But an openly gay bishop who divorced his wife and now lives with his partner?
"I guess I'm not there yet," McLean, interim rector at St. Mary's Episcopal in Tampa, said this week. "I have a hard time with that."
The Rev. V. Gene Robinson, a gay man who has lived with his partner for 14 years, stands to be ratified as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire during the Episcopal Church's general convention in Minneapolis this week.
Leaders gather at the 10-day convention to discuss procedural and liturgical resolutions for the Episcopal Church U.S.A., a denomination of about 2.3-million members.
But the Robinson vote has overshadowed everything else, creating an international uproar that threatens to split the church and weaken its ties with churches abroad.
Two dozen U.S. bishops have signed a letter warning they would break away if Robinson is confirmed, including Stephen Jecko of the Diocese of Florida, based in Jacksonville, and Hugo Pina-Lopez, assistant bishop of the Diocese of Central Florida.
The local bishop, John B. Lipscomb of the Diocese of Southwest Florida, did not sign the letter. But Lipscomb has said he will vote against Robinson's ratification.
The Episcopal Church is a part of the Anglican Communion, the religious umbrella that originated in England and has 38 provinces worldwide. Its head is the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Rowan Williams. Other members of the communion, including churches in Africa and Asia and South America, have rallied loudly against ratifying Robinson and said they will break ties with the American church if he becomes bishop.
They can voice their opinion, but other members of the communion have no authority over the Episcopal Church U.S.A., nor can the archbishop tell it what to do.
Homosexual priests and bishops are nothing new; Episcopal doctrine does allow them. But they are not allowed to have homosexual sex. That would be considered outside the bounds of marriage and, thus, fornication. Gay priests, then, are required to remain celibate, just like unmarried heterosexual priests.
With a live-in partner, Robinson is presumably not playing by the rules. Yet representatives in New Hampshire voted to make him their bishop. Robinson, 56, has worked directly under the diocese's outgoing bishop for more than a decade. He has counseled clergy, facilitated spiritual direction and designed programs for teens and adults, gaining a reputation for being personable.
"The reason I was elected had nothing to do with my orientation; for many people it was probably in spite of it," Robinson told the Episcopal News Service. "It was more due to the relationships I've built with them."
Now, the vote must pass a majority of the 109 dioceses that send clergy and lay "deputies" to the convention. If the deputies confirm the vote, the matter has to be passed by a majority of bishops.
Ratifying a bishop is typically a routine procedure. It is very rare that the convention does not uphold a diocese's vote for bishop.
Local clergy said this week that the buzz in Minneapolis indicates Robinson will be ratified.
Also on the convention's agenda is a resolution that allows priests to bless same-sex unions. Episcopal leaders said early this week that there was talk of postponing the vote on same-sex unions to avoid having two hot-button topics in the same convention. Votes on either measure will probably occur early next week.
Episcopalians in Florida have considered the ramifications.
McLean was torn, bordering on resentment that the New Hampshire diocese brought the issue to the forefront: "It sort of angers me that of all the good candidates they had in New Hampshire . . ."
The New Hampshire diocese, known for its liberalism, seems to have done this in the interest of "being revolutionary or cute," McLean said.
Other Episcopalians, among them Irv Lipscomb (not related to the bishop), are glad the church is being forced to face the situation head-on.
If the vote causes a big rift in the church, "I say, so what?" said Lipscomb, of Orlando. "If it causes a split, it causes a split. Churches have been splitting for years," he said.
Lipscomb is part of a national organization of gay Episcopalians called Integrity. In Orlando, he and about a dozen Episcopal friends have indulged in a kind of split all their own. They stopped going to a parish church, preferring to gather at someone's home each week. They bring covered dishes, talk and celebrate the Eucharist. One of them is an ordained priest, Lipscomb says.
Sizable splits have occurred in the Anglican community, as well, in recent years. Three years ago, archbishops from Rwanda and Southeast Asia established the Anglican Mission in America, which offers an alternative to Episcopalians in the United States.
The AMiA contends that the American Episcopal church suffers from compromised beliefs that have bowed to political correctness, so much so that homosexuality is accepted, while the deity of Jesus is not proclaimed in interfaith circles.
The congregation at St. Mary's in Tampa was about twice the size it is now. But a large group followed the former rector, Kevin Donlon, to form a new church under the AMiA, the Church of the Resurrection. Donlon left after the bishop banned him from church duties amid an investigation into a complaint about Donlon's behavior.
Although some Episcopalians, including some members of the AMiA, have left the church for fundamentalist reasons, plenty of remaining Episcopalians have similar viewpoints. "A lot of fundamentalism has come into the church," McLean said.
There was a time when most converts to the Episcopal Church came from the Roman Catholic Church. But recent statistics show that the No. 1 group of converts comes from Baptist backgrounds, McLean said. With them, these new members bring fundamentalist values.
"They have this profile of family, children and "Don't put a homosexual in my pulpit', " McLean said.
Last month, Bishop John Lipscomb sent a letter to local parishes, saying he does not support Robinson's ratification. He referred to the Episcopal Church's 1998 Lambeth conference, where leaders discussed human sexuality and Scripture.
The conference, Lipscomb wrote, upheld "faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage." Conference leaders said they "cannot advise the legitimizing or blessing of same-sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same-gender unions."
Since sending out his letter, Lipscomb said, he has gotten mixed reactions from those within the diocese, which extends from Brooksville south to Marco Island. He has received "many, many thoughtful and prayerful letters," Lipscomb said. Some asked "that I would prayerfully consider my own vote."
Lipscomb says he has. It will be no for both Robinson's ratification and the resolution for same-sex unions, if it is considered.
"I hope that the church has the strength to live through its current debate," he said.
John Feeney, a member at St. Peter's Episcopal Cathedral in St. Petersburg, says he opposes Robinson's ratification, but not enough to make a big deal of it.
"We have gay parishioners in the church that I go to and some of them are even friends of mine," Feeney said. "While I'm willing to talk about my opinions, I'm not going to get up and make speeches about it."
Feeney broke away from an evangelical faith and converted to the Episcopal church two years ago.
"This is probably one of the few issues on which I do have conservative opinions," said Feeney, who campaigns against war and capital punishment. "In the civic arena, I'm a total believer in gay rights," he said. "I don't believe that government belongs in people's bedrooms."
But he doesn't believe there is theological support for gay bishops.
Some said the church is not ready to deal with the Robinson case.
"It raises a level of difficulty to elect someone in an open relationship before the church has dealt with the issue," said the Rev. Raymond Dage of St. Stephen's Episcopal in New Port Richey. "And the church has not dealt with the theology."
References in the Bible that denounce homosexuality, he says, are still being interpreted differently. Some say the Bible is clear: Homosexuality is wrong. Others say passages that seem to denounce homosexuality are being interpreted out of context.
Yet, Dage says, "the issue is not homosexuality at all. The issue is really one of chastity, which you would expect in either the heterosexual or in the homosexual side."
Sex outside of marriage, he said, "is not something that people should be flaunting out in the open and saying, "See how wonderful this is?' "
Too many questions are left unanswered, Dage said.
Dage said that even if the vote for same-sex unions passes, he will not be required to perform them and he will not perform them.
But the priest, with 27 years of service, says that voting in a gay bishop and approving same-sex unions is not enough for him to break away from the Episcopal church.
"Schism," he said, "is a greater sin than almost any other one."
Southwest Florida deputies with a vote
Deputies from the Diocese of Southwest Florida who will vote at the General Convention:
Bishop John B. Lipscomb, the Rev. Hayden Crawford, St. Augustine's, St. Petersburg; the Rev. Sharon Lewis, Holy Spirit, Osprey; the Rev. Barry Kubler, St. Martin's, Hudson; the Rev. John Hiers, Ascension, Clearwater; and first alternate the Rev. Bob Hennagin, St. Hillary's, Fort Myers. Lay deputies are Joan O. Kline and Roger Schwenke, both from Ascension, Clearwater; Ronald J. Scott, Trinity-by-the-Cove, Naples; Karen O. Patterson, Grace, Tampa; and Paul Game, first alternate, St. John's, Tampa.
