All Saints Fort Worth Demands TEC Loyalty Oath of All 2009 Vestry Candidates

From Greg Griffith at Stand Firm:

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 • 11:22 pm

There are three "All Saints" parishes in the Diocese of Fort Worth; the one in Fort Worth proper has rolled out a loyalty oath that all vestry candidates standing for the January 2009 election are required to sign. It is reproduced below.

As has been noted many times on this site and elsewhere, Bishop Iker's position regarding whether a parish stays or goes is that he will abide by the decision of the rector and the vestry. The diocese has a canon that details how this is handled.

All Saints' rector and a majority of its current vestry wish to stay in TEC, but there are reports that about a third of the vestry are of a different mind. All Saints' congregation is reported to be as much as 75% conservative, and vestry elections are coming up next month.

There are at least two good lessons here:

The first is that it's important to know the people you elect to vestry. A majority conservative congregation that elects a vestry with different views on matters as important as whether or not the parish stays in TEC, indicates that perhaps some of the current vestry members' views on these matters weren't known - or weren't questioned - before the election was held.

The second is that this reeks of a rector and some members of his vestry deliberately attempting to subvert diocesan polity. They are clearly attempting to impose prior restraint on legitimate questions which vestry members are elected to address. Whether that technically constitutes a violation of the canons or constitution of the diocese is for the bishop and the diocesan chancellor to decide, but I'm hoping they check into this very carefully. I'm not so presumptuous as to suggest to Bishop Iker how he should handle situations such as this (there is still a lot about this situation I don't know, and he's been through things like this before), but if I were Bishop of All Fort Worth, I'd be looking into my options on vacating the vestry, or at the very least putting the kibosh on this particular bit of nonsense if it's within his purview to do so.