From The Buffalo News via TitusOneNine:
Updated: 12/15/08 08:35 AM
‘Sometimes God calls us out of our comfort zone.’— Rev. Arthur Ward Jr.
By Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Don and Gladys Miller worshipped weekly for 53 years in the sanctuary at 1064 Brighton Road.
But Sunday, the Millers walked away from the Town of Tonawanda church building they’ve known as their spiritual home since 1955.
“We’ve been here a long time, and it’s hard to leave,” said Don Miller, dabbing at tears. “We decided a long time ago that we would move with the church.”
The Millers are joining an expected several hundred parishioners of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in a highly unusual journey: Not only are they moving into a new facility, they’re also leaving the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Western New York.
Henceforth, the members of St. Bartholomew’s will be known as Anglicans, not Episcopalians, and they’ll worship in a former synagogue on Eggert Road, less than a mile away from the former site at Brighton and Fries roads.
“Sometimes God calls us out of our comfort zone,” the Rev. Arthur W. Ward Jr. said in his sermon. “Now we must follow the way God has shown for us.”
Ward and members of what was one of largest Episcopal parishes in New York have had a long-standing dispute with the diocese and the national denomination over biblical authority. The rift widened in 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay bishop.
The congregation plans to join a new Anglican Province of North America that could rival the Episcopal Church and severe-
ly fracture the 77 million-member Worldwide Anglican Communion.
The membership chose not to contest ownership of the property in court and instead purchased the former Temple Beth El for $750,000. The congregation will celebrate its first liturgy in the new sanctuary this Sunday.
The Episcopal diocese will continue to operate a parish called Church of the Holy Apostles at 1064 Brighton Road. Bishop J. Michael Garrison will host a meeting and compline service at 7 p. m. today.
Some St. Bart’s parishioners have expressed an interest in staying in the Episcopal Church, said Garrison.
“We have heard from a few people, not a lot. We’re hoping we’ll be able to start something fresh there,” the bishop said.
Ward said he knew of only a few families, less than 5 percent of the parish, who said they would not join him and other parishioners at the Eggert Road site.
Garrison met briefly with Ward on Sunday and said he was pleased by the tenor of the transition.
Some members of St. Bart’s also expressed somberness over the division.
“I always loved the Episcopal Church,” said choir member Carol Jean Swist of the Town of Tonawanda. “I loved that unity of the church all my life. . . . It’s sad to split. It’s sad to leave the building.”
But Swist and others maintained that the Episcopal Church has become too liberal and watered down in its beliefs, particularly its interpretation of the Bible and teachings about the path to salvation.
“We’re acknowledging Jesus as Christ and salvation, and that’s really what the Episcopal Church is getting away from,” said Elaine De Marchi of Grand Island.
Any sadness over the move will be superseded by the “joy of a new chapter,” said Ward. “We have a sense of real freedom.”
More than 600 people attended three emotional services Sunday in the Brighton Road church, where Ward has served as rector for the past decade.
At the end of the 11 a. m. liturgy, Ward extinguished a church candle before proceeding out of the sanctuary with a lighted candle that was later placed in the new sanctuary as a symbol of the congregation’s transfer from one location to another.
“We’re all in agreement with what we’re doing,” said Eleanor Huffcut, also among the founding members of the parish. She and her husband, James, would rather leave the building than the community of St. Bart’s.
“Too many memories, too many friends,” she said.
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