Via VirtueOnline:
Episcopalian faithful are looking to fill pews and feed souls.
By Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/D=g/ci_15080730
May 13, 2010
The question put to the Rev. Michael Barlowe is on the minds of many Utahns as they quiz four candidates for bishop:
"Where do you see the Episcopal Church in Utah in three years?"
Barlowe's answer, given recently to a group of Episcopalians in Ogden, is both a joke about the state's culture and a wish -- and it is greeted with applause:
"I'm not the prophet," he says. "But I would hope we'd be a much larger church."
Indeed, growing the church is very much on the minds of Utah Episcopalians as they come to the end of an 18-month process of selecting a new bishop to replace the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, Utah's 10th Episcopal bishop.
The 11th bishop will be elected May 22 in a special convention at St. Mark's Cathedral in Salt Lake City.
Like many mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church is losing members.
Utah, which had about 6,000 Episcopalians in 1996, when Tanner Irish was consecrated, now is down to 5,200 -- a 13 percent drop during a period in which the state's population swelled by 37 percent.
On any given Sunday, notes the Rev. Scott Hayashi, another of the finalists, only 1,600 are in the pews of Utah's 25 Episcopal congregations.
And yet, for Episcopalians, growth is not so much about having numbers to boast about as sharing what members see as a historical, richly liturgical and welcoming form of Christianity.
Rather than talking numbers, they talk about congregational development and mission, two priorities stressed by all four candidates.
"Our work," says the Rev. Mary Sulerud, another candidate, "is reconciling this world to God."
Park City resident Nancy Conrow says the church offers much to the disenfranchised and yet often gets overlooked as an alternative.
"There are so many people who feel mainstream religions have left them behind," she says. "They can't handle the doctrines or rules they've encountered. They've seen some poor examples of being told what to think."
Conrow is a member of Park City's St. Luke's Episcopal Church, which operates on the slogan: "Love God, think for yourself."
"I'm not sure people realize," she says, "how much freedom for intellectual pursuit it [the Episcopal Church] offers."
For Perry resident Ivan Adams, a member of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Brigham City, the answer to the malaise lies with its lay members, who need to be developed and sent into each community to help the needy.
"A lot of us talk about growth in numbers when we ought to talk about growth in spirituality," Adams says. "If we do a good job of that, we are going to grow. It's contagious."
Others insist the church needs to do better with youths and young adults -- and has the resources to do so.
The diocese is fairly well-off, thanks to a trust fund, now worth about $100 million, created with proceeds from the sale of St. Mark's Hospital in the 1980s. That trust, though, was used a collateral for $34 million in debt for building projects. Payments on that will begin in 2013.
Jan Cassman, a member of St. Barnabas in Tooele, says youth programs are her big issue. "The competition out there has a ton going on," says the mother of three teen-aged boys.
Each of the four candidates say they would restore and improve college campus ministries, which the diocese cut recently to save money.
The Rev. Juan A. Quevedo-Bosch, one of the candidates, says the problems in the Utah church parallel those in the national one.
It's as if the church is autistic, he says. "We're trapped in ourselves. We cannot communicate. We need to talk to the world."
Small numbers, big imprint
One irony is that, although the Episcopal Church is small in Utah, its presence is not.
That's partly because of the church's roots in U.S. history and corridors of money and power and the fact it is the oldest non-Mormon denomination in the state.
Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle, who arrived in Salt Lake City in 1867, was aggressive in his missionary work. He established Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School, St. Mark's Hospital and six churches before he left Utah some 20 years later.
In recent years, Tanner Irish, a member of a prominent Utah LDS family and trustee of O.C. Tanner Co., has kept the church's profile high.
The church was one of the first to press, unsuccessfully, for a ban on guns in churches, and its early openness to gay clergy earned it a reputation in Utah and among Episcopalians nationally as a liberal church.
Only one small group split off from the diocese after V. Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire, the church's first gay bishop. A group of Episcopalians in Park City formed St. John's Anglican Church rather than remain at St. Luke's. In other regions, entire dioceses have bolted from the Episcopal Church over gay clergy and ordinations.
"The Episcopal Church makes great newspaper articles because we do reach out to the marginalized and those who feel like they are outcasts," says Copeland Johnston, a former Mormon who fell in love with the Episcopal Church's "liturgy, music and mystery."
Johnston recently returned to Utah after 10 years in Chicago and is a member of St. Mark's Cathedral.
His hope is that the next bishop will fare better at teaching converts the faith's history and beliefs, including the fact that other Protestant denominations and even the LDS Church owe much to the Episcopal Church and its music.
"Instead of reacting to the predominant LDS culture, we need to hold fast to our tradition," Johnston says. "It's something people need to lay hold of and be proud of."
The Mormon question
One question that may be answered May 22 is whether Episcopalians believe electing a gay bishop would help or hurt their diocese, which shares its home with the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The LDS Church is credited or blamed, depending on one's perspective, with helping to end gay marriage in California by backing Proposition 8 in 2008.
Candidate Barlowe and his partner of 28 years, the Rev. Paul Burrows, also an Episcopal priest, wedded in California that year, when such marriages were legal.
Conrow says it's time Utah Episcopalians take such a stand. "I'd like to see us have the strength to stand up and say, 'This is where we are.' "
Yet she worries that electing a gay bishop would be seen as "waving a flag in front of the bull so no one can hear your message."
"I'd hate it to be perceived that way," Conrow says. "It's more than that. It's about inclusion."
The Rev. Rick Whittaker, vicar at Tooele's St. Barnabas, says he doesn't believe Barlowe's sexual orientation will be a factor in the vote.
"The fact he is gay," Whittaker says, "is the least interesting thing about him."
For his part, Barlowe rejects the idea that a vote for him would be a jab at the state's dominant faith.
"If I am elected, it will because they [voters] and I have discerned this is what God wants and no other reason."
Barlowe says his election might even be good for the Mormon Church. He points to comments by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the LDS First Presidency, at last month's General Conference.
Uchtdorf urged Mormons to welcome and love all of God's children, "including those who might dress, look, speak or just do things differently."
Barlowe sees such comments as an open door.
"My being a person, not a vague abstract idea, would help them be what they say they want to be."
Big vote looms
Utah Episcopal priests, deacons and lay members will gather May 22 in Salt Lake City at St. Mark's Cathedral to elect the diocese's 11th bishop.
The day, described as one of "quiet discernment, prayer and reflection," will begin with the Holy Eucharist at 8:45 a.m. followed by balloting.
A candidate will be elected when he or she receives a simple majority of the 37 clerical votes and a simple majority of the 131 votes of lay members from parishes throughout the diocese, which covers all of Utah and includes Page, Ariz.
It took five ballots to reach that threshold during the election of the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish in 1996, said Craig Wirth, communications officer for the diocese.
The new bishop will be consecrated Nov. 6 by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at St. Mark's and be seated the next day.
END
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