Via TitusOneNine:
By STEVEN SPEARIE
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Feb 20, 2010 @ 11:30 PM
Springfield’s Episcopal Church diocese will be under national scrutiny as it seeks a successor for Bishop Peter Beckwith.
Beckwith has allied himself with the conservative wing of the broader Anglican umbrella, and the timing of his retirement, which took effect Feb. 1, caught many in the church off guard.
Diocesan officials believe they can adhere to a timeline that will result in consecration of a new bishop by March 2011. But knotty problems may lie ahead, particularly because whomever local Episcoplians choose as their new bishop must also be approved by a majority of U.S. bishops and standing committees — delegates from Episcopal dioceses around the country.
“It’s a hugely messy situation,” said David Virtue of VirtueOnline, an orthodox Anglican Web site. “A search for his replacement will be ugly in the extreme.”
“Usually these votes are pro forma,” said the Very Rev. John Bettman, vicar of St. Paul’s Church in Carlinville. “But the church is so polarized nationally, (the candidate) might be a problem now.”
Beckwith, who was consecrated in Springfield 18 years ago, retired two years before the mandatory age of 72. He thinks the transition will be smoother than critics believe.
“Ugly? I don’t think much of that assessment,” Beckwith said in an interview at his Springfield home. “I have more confidence in the clergy and people than that.
“I’ve told people you’re going to get the bishop that you deserve.”
Defender of orthodoxy
Beckwith has always called himself “a faithful Christian in the Episcopal Church,” but his version of the church and the one administered by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori differ, however.
That played out most prominently, Beckwith said, in the church’s endorsements of V. Eugene Robinson, who is openly gay, as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire and Barry Beisner, who is twice divorced, as bishop of the Diocese of Northern California.
In a June 30, 2006 pastoral letter, Beckwith labelled Schori’s theology “New Age.” At the same time, the Springfield diocese’s standing committee declared Schori “to be outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy and the clear parameters of the Christian faith, as understood from an Anglican perspective” and asked for direct oversight from the Archbishop of Canterbury in England.
Last year, there was speculation that Beckwith might show up at the inaugural assembly in Bedford, Tex., of a newly-formed conservative splinter, the Anglican Church of North America
He did not, and Beckwith recently said he had “no immediate plans to join ACNA.” However, he acknowledged that he has more in common with the secessionist church than the Episcopal Church.
“I expect to continue to have close friendships with ACNA and with the Roman Catholic Church, too,” Beckwith said.
Critics’ charges
Beckwith’s critics say the damage has been done and wonder what kind of future leader the Springfield diocese -- made up of 38 churches and missions comprising about 5,000 people over 60 counties -- might attract.
The Rev. Virginia Bennett, rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Edwardsville, publicly disagreed with Beckwith several years ago, when Beckwith refused the sacrament of confirmation to a lesbian member of St. Andrew’s. When two of the church’s eucharistic ministers publicly refused communion from Beckwith, he stripped the licenses of all the church’s eucharistic ministers.
Although cooler heads eventually prevailed, Bennett said recently she never thought Beckwith’s apology was sincere.
With Beckwith’s retirement, she compared the diocese to a battlefield after the aggression has stopped, and she contended the election process for the next bishop is being rushed.
“I don’t see how we can move to a healthy place without tending to these wounds,” Bennett said. “If (the diocese) doesn’t deal with these wounds, the next bishop will.”
Full steam ahead
In Beckwith’s absence, the diocese’s standing committee, made up of four clergy members and four lay people, will carry on day-to-day activities, according to the Venerable Shawn Denney, the diocesan archdeacon. The standing committee has also begun the election process, with guidelines and nomination forms going out last week.
A nominating synod will whittle the list to four or five candidates, who will meet with clergy and church members at several locales in the diocese. An electing synod, made up of clergy and lay delegates from the various congregations, is scheduled to convene in mid-September to finalize the choice.
The candidate is then put on the national stage, to the bishops and dioceses’ standing committees.
Carlinville’s Bettman said he hopes the diocese doesn’t get a re-play of what happened in the Diocese of South Carolina in 2007. The electing synod’s first vote to name the Right Rev. Mark Lawrence, a conservative, was declared void. Lawrence was subsequently re-elected, approved and consecrated bishop in 2008.
“It’s hard to come up with a majority sometimes,” said Bettman. “It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do. “People have deep-held beliefs (about their candidates.)”
Denney said the timeline is realistic and that the process is not being rushed.
“We have everything lined up,” he said. “There’s no reason the selection of the bishop can’t take place.”
“Irons in the fire”
Beckwith said he approached the diocese in November 2008 about electing a bishop coadjutor, who would have served alongside Beckwith until his formal retirement and would have had rights to succession, according to church law.
However, holding such an election wasn’t approved by the national church until May 2009.
“In concurring with folks from around the diocese, I thought it would be better to retire sooner than later,” said Beckwith.
His retirement decision came down to “a decline of energy,” Beckwith said.
“Ten years ago, I couldn’t wait to get to the office or get up at 2:30 or 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday to travel around the diocese,” he said. “After 45 years of ministry, I’m not up to the task anymore.”
Beckwith said he and his wife, Melinda, don’t plan to retire in Springfield, but they’re not ready to pull up stakes yet, either. He’s been approached about being a bishop in residence or serving as a chaplain (Beckwith is a former military chaplain), but he wouldn’t say if those ministries would be inside or outside of the Episcopal Church.
“I don’t plan to give up ministry,” Beckwith said. “I have irons in the fire.”
From 2009 Diocesan Synod
“The real problem is this: the Episcopal Church is now on record as declaring moral what the Church, from the beginning, has taught is immoral. ... A Church that claims to follow Christ as Savior and Lord cannot succeed if it endorses and adopts secular values because it will then have turned its back on the fundamental mission of calling people to holiness through repentance and forgiveness. No one needs a Church that aligns itself with worldly values at the expense of eternal biblical principles.”
--Bishop Peter H. Beckwith
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