Since 1990, the church has been roiled by a series of scandals involving philandering bishops, embezzlement by the denomination’s treasurer and reports of sordid orgies in a Brooklyn church by cross-dressing priests using young men imported from Brazil. Over the last three decades, church membership has declined by a third to a modest 2.4 million members. Instead of civil discourse, traditionalists and modernizers in the church are hurling epithets like ““apostate’’ and ““Shiite Episcopalian’’ at each other. ““These two forces are tearing the church apart,’’ says Bishop Jack Iker of Ft. Worth, Texas. ““This is a struggle for the soul of the Episcopal Church.''
The most controversial issues facing convention delegates concern sexual morality. Like the Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ and other Protestant denominations, the Episcopalians are deeply divided over homosexuality. Last year, in a rare ecclesiastical trial, a retired bishop was acquitted of heresy charges for knowingly ordaining a sexually active gay man -something the church has tacitly permitted for a long time under an informal policy of ““don’t ask, don’t tell.’’ One resolution before the convention would leave the ordination of active homosexuals and lesbians to the discretion of individual bishops. A contrary resolution - no less remarkable - would have the convention reaffirm traditional teaching that all members of the clergy ““are to abstain from sexual relations outside marriage.’’ But similar resolutions failed at the last two General Conventions, and in any case the drift of the church for the last 25 years has been toward relaxed sexual standards for clergy as well as laity.
An even more explosive issue is whether the church should add a blessing ceremony for same-sex couples to its Book of Occasional Services. Officials of Integrity, the church’s powerful gay-and-lesbian lobby, are confident that homosexual marriages will be accepted by the church - if not at this convention, then at the next. Gay Episcopalians have a staunch ally in the Rt. Rev. Edmond Browning, the church’s presiding bishop. During his tumultuous 12-year tenure, Browning has had as his goal the creation of ““a more inclusive and compassionate’’ church where ““there are no outcasts.’’ But his pro-gay stance has alienated the church’s conservative wing and fueled murmurs of schism in a dozen of the church’s 113 dioceses. ““The real issue is not inclusion but accommodation,’’ says Bishop James Stanton of Dallas. ““Do we change the Ten Commandments to make them more palatable to people? The more accommodating we become, the more we drive people out of the church.''
Indeed, so tense is the mood that a number of reconciliation groups are already working to prevent dioceses from pulling out of the church. The Diocese of Tennessee may adopt a procedure for ““conflict resolution’’ - based on the Camp David formula that brought Israel and Egypt together in 1979. ““Everybody is trying to find a way to hold the church together,’’ says Roger Boltz of the American Anglican Council, a group formed last year to unite conservative Episcopalians.
Clearly, the church has lost the moderation it once exuded when Episcopalians assumed they had found the perfect fit of Scripture, tradition and sweet reason. But beginning with the civil-rights movement of the ’60s, church leaders summoned their complacent flock to become more socially relevant. In the ’70s, the Episcopal Church upset many constituents by translating the hallowed Book of Common Prayer into a more contemporary but - to many - less transcendent idiom. Rules governing divorced clergy were relaxed. The boldest step came in 1976, when the General Convention approved the ordination of women - a decision a few bishops still do not regard as justified by Scripture or church tradition. For many Episcopalians, the acceptance of homosexuality is the final rip in what was once the large and seamless tent of Anglican Christianity.
Despite the church’s problems, most bishops seem to feel their church has gained new vibrancy. In any case, today’s Episcopalians are a different and uncertain breed. There is still disagreement between socially activist clergy and conservative laity. But there are also deeply felt dif- ferences between doctrinally indifferent Episcopalians and those who have been influenced by surging evangelical and Pentecostal movements within the church. At least half the church’s active members now are converts, and two thirds of the seminarians were not raised as Episcopalians. Nor are they as well educated as clergy of the past. Many of these newcomers have divergent agendas and little knowledge of earlier, more commodious church tradition. With fewer full-time posts in parishes available, many priests now constitute a kind of ecclesiastical national guard who work only on weekends.
Any radical decisions by next week’s convention could also threaten the unity of the worldwide Anglican Communion, to which the Episcopal Church belongs. Last February, 80 bishops from 20 of the communion’s 35 provinces adopted a report condemning ““all promiscuous sex’’ as ““sin.’’ Days later, the South East Asian province passed a resolution declaring that its bishops would no longer consider themselves in communion with any other Anglican bishops who ordain noncelibate homosexuals or bless same-sex unions.
Faced with such uncertainty, two potential candidates have already withdrawn from the election for a new presiding bishop. Five other candidates, including one conservative African-American, remain. The delegates will also vote on a ““concordat’’ leading to full communion with the 5.2 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. What ails Episcopalians most is not the loss of moderation or toleration but a lack of clear identity. ““A lot of people in the church aren’t quite sure what, if anything, their being Episcopalian means,’’ says Dr. Herbert Wentz, an emeritus professor of religion at the University of the South. That may be the church’s biggest challenge.
