Via VirtueOnline:
Fabric of Hamilton's Christ Church makes way to Danvers
By Ethan Forman, Staff writer
The Salem News
http://www.salemnews.com/punews/local_story_275200324.html?keyword=topstory
October 2, 2009
The new Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church promises to breathe new life into a former Roman Catholic church on Elliott Street, while galvanizing its own faith community.
Its founders are leaving Christ Church in South Hamilton over what they call the "moral drift" of the Episcopal Church in general.
Tomorrow morning, this new Anglican church will celebrate its first services in the former St. Alphonsus Church at 188 Elliott St., which closed its doors in 2004.
Volunteers for Christ the Redeemer have worked feverishly since Aug. 1 to get the octagonal building shipshape, installing a new floor in the parish hall, redoing the kitchen, replacing rotted boards and painting trim.
A core membership of 200 former Christ Church members have raised $370,000 to pay for the initial startup, with the hope of raising more to buy the church outright.
This new parish has its roots in a deep division among conservatives and liberals within the Episcopal Church as a whole, strife that came to a head in 2003 with the consecration of the openly gay Right Rev. Gene Robinson as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire.
The founders of this new church don't consider this a split from the Hamilton parish, but the founding of a new church under the Anglican Communion, said David Greening, 58, of Beverly, a retired marketing and communications manager from Osram Sylvania. He's the church's senior warden.
"It's more of a pioneering effort on our part," Greening said. "This is not a schism."
However, the group coming over from Hamilton includes the very DNA of Christ Church, including the 12-year priest and rector, the Rev. Jurgen Liias; its curate, the Rev. Brian Barry; and Dan McKinley, a world-renowned organist and choirmaster.
The group also includes Bill Harper, 70, of Hamilton, the new church's property chairman who retired from teaching politics at Gordon College three years ago. It also includes the Rev. Malcolm Reid, 72, of Wenham.
These men are leaving a church where their children were married and whose cemetery contains their parents' gravestones. Greening had been a member of Christ Church for 35 years, Reid, who comes from New Zealand, for 32 years, and Harper for 37 years. Liias was away on a spiritual retreat and unavailable for comment.
While it's not known how many might show up tomorrow at Christ the Redeemer, they will be greeted by a 30-person choir.
"How many we will get on Sunday is up to the Lord. We'll see," Greening said.
Also tomorrow, Christ Church will welcome a new priest-in-charge, the Rev. Patrick Gray. Similarly, he wondered how many people he'd see tomorrow.
Christ Church averaged 700 people in three Sunday morning services, and some of those who still at Christ Church are sad their friends are leaving, Gray said.
"My observation is this birth - the split, the leaving, whatever you want to call it - it has been hard and it has made an impact on the people staying behind," Gray said.
Those leaving Christ Church are not critical of their former church.
"Many people who have stayed at Christ Church are staying because Christ Church is an orthodox parish," Reid said. "Many of us had a lot of misgivings about the theological and moral drift of the Episcopal Church. We stayed. We've seen this since we came into the church. We've seen this getting worse, and we've tried to let our voice be known but we came to the conclusion they are not interested.
"They believe they can deny the creed and reject the authority of the scripture and a lot of things follow from that, like same-sex marriages and so forth."
This new Christ the Redeemer Church falls under the newly formed Anglican Church in North America, which has a membership estimated at 100,000, according to its Web site.
How many are leaving the Episcopal Church over these matters is hard to figure. As of 2008, a majority of members in 80 congregations of the 7,600 churches in the Episcopal Church in the United States have chosen to leave, according to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, which covers eastern Massachusetts.
Within the local diocese of 194 congregations, one church has left in Marlborough and four have had congregations split off, including Christ Church in Hamilton.
"Whether we are right or wrong on the issues, we all have to figure out how to save the ship," said Gray, who describes himself as a moderate conservative and an evangelical who helps with the ordination of priests as the co-chairman of the Commission on Ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
"The question for me is how can I be an active participant to the church I have been called to," Gray said. Gray is a graduate of Gordon College in Wenham and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton.
While Gray is settling in as Christ Church's rector, the new church is setting up shop in St. Alphonsus, which has a soaring wooden ceiling and brightly colored stained-glass windows. The building and surrounding property was purchased by the Living Hope Church of the Nazarene in Beverly for $1.3 million in 2006, town records show.
"Every day, someone drives in the parking lot from St. Alphonsus and wants to know what is going on," Greening said. Many former parishioners feared the church may someday be torn down by a developer, he said.
As a steering committee searched for a new location, pondering locations like the Cummings Center, a gymnasium and another church building, a Church of the Nazarene elder who heads off-campus programs at Gordon College called Reid.
"As time went on it became more and more evident to all of us that this really looked like the best fit," Greening said, "especially since we are a liturgical community and we are surrounded by stained glass and a real sense of being in a liturgical space."
This group has until next August to decide if it wants to buy the church, and another six months after that to come up with the financing.
Christ the Redeemer holds its first services at 8 and 10 a.m., with the Right Rev. Bill Murdoch of Amesbury, the bishop of the Anglican Diocese in New England. Services at Christ Church will be at 8, 9 and 11 a.m., with Gray welcomed at 9 a.m.
END
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