Scranton parish is part of realignment

From the Times Tribune:

Episcopal Church split has effect on local members

BY LAURA LEGERE
STAFF WRITER

Published: Saturday, December 06, 2008
Updated: Saturday, December 6, 2008 4:13 AM EST

When conservative members of the Episcopal Church announced plans to found a new denomination this week, the fissure had a direct impact on one local church and appeared uncomfortably familiar to members of another.

No churches in the local Episcopal diocese planned to join the new denomination, called the Anglican Church in North America. But a Scranton parish was among the small denominations that had previously left the Episcopal Church that formed a coalition to develop the new province.

Grace Reformed Episcopal Church, on Laurel Drive, is a part of the Reformed Episcopal Church, which broke away from the mother Episcopal Church in 1873 for broadly evangelical reasons. The pastor of the local church, the Rev. Paul Howden, said the presiding bishop of his denomination helped lead the way in forming the coalition of conservative denominations and Episcopal dioceses that on Wednesday joined to make the new province.

For the small denomination — there are about 10,000 members of the Reformed Episcopal Church — the new province signals a much bigger alliance than it has had in its history as a breakaway group.

“Instead of feeling lonely and isolated with so few churches throughout the country, we go from 10,000 to 100,000 members,” he said, referring to the estimated number of adherents in the new province.

“It’s still a little lonely and isolated, but not as much.”

For another local parish, the move by some national Episcopalians to break away from the church this week had a painful parallel at home.

They witnessed a dramatic example of a conservative split four years ago, when the Rev. Eric Bergman, then a priest at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, left the denomination to become the first married Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Scranton. At least 30 Good Shepherd parishioners converted to Catholicism with him.

At the time, the Rev. Bergman said his disillusionment with the Episcopal faith peaked with the ordination of an openly gay bishop, the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson, in the Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003. He was also bothered by other liberal inclinations of the church, including its acceptance of contraceptives and its position on abortion.

Those same complaints were at the heart of the break on Wednesday.

Warren Shotto, senior warden of the Good Shepherd parish, said the split in the national church was disappointing even though it was long expected.

“My only problem with the whole thing is that I have always felt the Episcopal Church was inclusive rather than exclusive, and there’s a certain faction that still thrives on the exclusivity,” he said.

If the Church of the Good Shepherd is indicative of the larger Episcopal Church, a positive reformation can follow a fissure. Mr. Shotto said the Rev. Bergman’s departure “ended up being the best thing that’s happened to our parish because it made us reflect on ourselves and examine our strengths.”

In recent years, the parish has grown its membership and increased its outreach efforts, especially to the homeless.

Members of the fledgling Anglican Church of North America also are hoping for a period of growth after their initial break.

For the four dioceses of the Episcopal Church that separated to found the new denomination — Pittsburgh; Quincy, Ill.; Fort Worth, Texas; and San Joaquin, Calif. — their home province will be markedly smaller than their old one. The Episcopal Church has 2.3 million members.

The new province aims to gather other conservative parishes over time, the Rev. Howden said.

“Our hope,” he said, “is there are a lot of conservative Episcopal parishes throughout the country who are getting tired of the theological liberalism that will come over to our new province now.”

The Rev. Howden also said he suspects the new province will attract conservative parishioners — he calls them “disaffected Episcopalians”— in a steadier stream than he has seen before. So far, though, “It hasn’t been an avalanche of people.”

The national rift struck some continuing Episcopalians as particularly disheartening because since its founding, the Anglican Communion, the global church, has been defined by the premise that its members are bound together by shared worship and the Book of Common Prayer even when they are in disagreement, said the Rev. Peter D’Angio, the priest in charge of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

He said that ideal still holds at St. Luke’s, which leans to the more liberal side of the Episcopal Church and thus was changed little by the split.

“All the education we do really emphasizes that a plurality of opinion is OK in the congregation,” he said. “I can disagree with you in the congregation, but I can still worship with you.”

But the Rev. Howden defined the formation of the rival denomination on Wednesday as evidence that the limit of that tolerance can be, and has been, reached, especially with the ordination of a gay bishop.

“Even with the greater toleration that we have, there are still limits that have to be upheld,” he said.