Presiding Over a Schism

A True Story, Part One

For the past nineteen years I have resisted, without much difficulty, saying anything publicly about a schism at the Church of the Redeemer in Rochester, New Hampshire that took place while I was Rector there, 1986-1991. But as things have evolved, and as the bishops are about to meet next week, I believe the telling of my experience there may be helpful if not instructive. It has come into my memory frequently of late and I believe that may be because the Spirit is suggesting that the story be told. But I want to tell the conclusion before telling the story. In a schism no one wins and everyone loses. That does not mean that I would keep schism from happening at all costs, but that there is no way to win if schism happens. It is one thing to do some pruning. It is another thing if both sides keep chopping away at the other so much that survival is impossible. If people want a schism they'll get one. If they don't they'll work it out. But ultimately schism does not get either side what it wants.

In September of 1986 I became the Rector of the Church of the Redeemer, Rochester, New Hampshire. I had come to New Hampshire three years earlier to be Curate at St. John's in Portsmouth. This was my second curacy and as I began to contemplate becoming a Rector Redeemer opened up. I was hopeful of remaining in coastal New Hampshire if I found a call I believed was truly from God. Redeemer was perceived and self-described as being Anglo-Catholic. For the preceding ten years the previous Rector had been battling the Bishop, Phil Smith, about the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which the Rector had refused to use at all. When the Bishop refused to come to do Confirmations until Redeemer started using Rite One the Rector complied and then retired. I had come to New Hampshire from the Diocese of Dallas as something of a refugee, fleeing Dallas' growing conservatism especially at that time over the ordination of women. St. John's was itself still moving into the 1979 Prayer Book, using it only half the Sundays of a month (one Holy Communion and one Morning Prayer), and half the Sundays were Rite One (also one Holy Eucharist and one Morning Prayer). Redeemer was looking for a young priest who would understand them but also be acceptable to the Diocese of New Hampshire. Here I was, thirty years old, serving in a parish that still used 1928 at least some of the time, already involved with the Diocese and from something of an Anglo-Catholic background. But it was about just this perception that I was most concerned. I told the Search Committee in writing that I supported the ordination of women and the 1979 Prayer Book, but understood that they were a Rite One parish and would remain so. When Redeemer called me some misinterpreted their calling of me as an indication that most of the conservatism there was driven by the previous Rector. As it turns out, I was the final candidate and the Vestry was hesitant to call me. But the Senior Warden felt that the parish could not take any more uncertainty so the attitude in calling me was, "If he doesn't do what we want we'll fire him." Obviously, I only learned about this some months later.

Foolishly on my part, I came before we had a Letter of Agreement. Soon after I came we began putting one together at the insistence of the new Bishop, Douglas Theuner. Before my second Vestry meeting the Senior Warden of the past thirty years gave me a draft Letter of Agreement that had these words, "The Rector shall serve at the will of the Vestry." I corrected that portion of the letter to conform to the Canons of the Episcopal Church and returned it to the Senior Warden. The proper Letter was presented at my second meeting with the Vestry, a very tense meeting, and it was approved. The next night was my induction and the Junior Warden approached me afterwards and said, "Well I guess we're stuck with you now." But surprisingly, the next few months were relatively smooth, given this challenging beginning.

About six months after I arrived some mothers approached me about the possibility of their girls serving as acolytes. Other women approached me desiring to be Lectors. That's right. These people loved my predecessor but were hoping that with a new Rector there would be more participation from females. When I discussed this with the Wardens and the Treasurer they simply said, "Absolutely not, tell them to go to a nearby parish." My reply to them was that I was not going to continue to say no and that we needed to work something out. As we continued to meet monthly, and I kept raising the issue, I was informed that if I was even considering the possibility of girl acolytes or women as Lectors I should resign. I was asked about my views on homosexuality and told them that if a homosexual who was otherwise faithful in his participation at Redeemer wanted to be a Lector I would allow that to happen. That summer a girl in the parish in her later years of high school attended the Episcopal Youth Event where she saw ordained women for the first time and returned not only desiring to be an acolyte but naming the sexism in my refusal to let her be an acolyte.

After I had been at Redeemer for fifteen months, December, 1987, I brought these and other requests from parishioners to the Vestry as Agenda items under "Requests from Parishioners." I informed the Vestry that I had the canonical authority to make these changes but that I wanted us to work this out together. The first words out of a Vestry member's mouth were, "This is all going to lead to homosexuals and communists." I wanted to say, but did not, that actually we have always had homosexuals and communists in the Church but that girls and women were indeed new! The Vestry went on record, I believe the vote was 8 to 5, to not support these changes at Redeemer. At the same meeting the Vestry and I did agree that we would begin a third service on Sunday evenings and with this vote in mind, I decided to allow girls and women, Rite Two, and the Passing of the Peace, (all requests from parishioners), at the Sunday evening service. This set up a kind of apartheid based on sex but it seemed better than having no place at all for girls and women who wanted to serve at the Altar. The Vestry's response at our next meeting was to ask for my resignation and reduce my salary. At this point things started to get testy. I think the Vestry assumed I would resign and that would be that. They were also used to doing things in secret and somehow thought that only the "right" people would know of their request. But the following Sunday I announced that the Vestry had requested my resignation due to my allowing girls and women to participate and that I was not going to resign because that was not going to solve the issue. The Vestry was stunned at the announcement and parishioners were outraged at the Vestry. Quite honestly, I was surprised at the intensity of the reaction. But I now had people at each other's throats, and we had an Annual Meeting coming in a few weeks.

Prior to the Annual Meeting I attended a Trinity Institute with the title, "The Question of Authority" and the keynote speaker was then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie. At one point Runcie had been talking about the new Christian right and its effect on all of Christianity and within Anglicanism. He had also compared the church to musicians and said that when there are only a few there is no need of a conductor, but that when whole sections are added a conductor becomes necessary if the people want to make music rather than noise. During a break I managed to speak with Archbishop Runcie and said, "I have a girl, a piccolo let's say, who wants to be an acolyte. But I have a whole section of trombones who are saying that they will leave if I let the piccolo play. What should I do?" Runcie looked me straight in the eye and said, "You mustn't let the trombones triumph. You need more piccolos. Tell the ones you've got to be patient." Upon my return to Rochester I told Bp. Theuner of my conversation with Archbishop Runcie. "Tom", he asked, "are you planning on telling that story at your Annual Meeting?" I replied, "Well it's helpful to me but I'm not sure it's going to help matters with the trombones." Bp. Theuner said, "Tom, if I was a parishioner at the Church of the Redeemer and I knew that you had spoken with the Archbishop of Canterbury about what was going on my parish I would not only want to know what he said, I would think I had a right to know what he said. Tom, tell that story to your Annual Meeting."

A True Story, Part Two of Two

When we gathered for the Annual Meeting there were two hundred people present. I posed the question to Annual Meeting, "How do you want your Rector to respond?" And I told the story of my conversation with Archbishop Runcie. I opened the floor for discussion. The first person to speak was the Senior Warden who said, "That's not the Archbishop of Canterbury standing in front of us." Over an hour later it was obvious to everyone present, without voting, that the parish was split very evenly, and that a number of people on each side were ready for people on the other side to leave. It rocked everyone. I do not know of anyone on either side who slept that night.

Prior to the February Vestry meeting Bp. Theuner and I talked with the Canon to the Ordinary, Gene Robinson. Gene had come out to a few people, including me, but it was not generally known that he was a gay man at that point. The Senior Warden, the Bishop, and I agreed that Gene would come to the February meeting to try help us work things out. Prior to the meeting Gene and Bp. Theuner asked me to pledge to make no more changes for rest of 1988, which meant that girls and women would not be allowed to function on Sunday morning until January of 1989. I agreed reluctantly. During the Vestry meeting Gene assured the Vestry that all of the changes being discussed would happen at the Church of the Redeemer, whether I was the Rector or not, and that they would probably happen faster during an interim if I were to leave. I then pledged to make no more changes for the rest of 1988. The Vestry's response was to formally ask the Bishop to remove me. Gene Robinson was amazed and asked if anyone had heard what he or I had said, but the Vestry remained resolute.

Over the next eight weeks I was thoroughly examined by the Bishop and Standing Committee. All of the ecumenical and neighboring Episcopal clergy were called about my performance. The Bishop made a surprise visit on a Sunday morning and visited the hospital to see if I had been seeing parishioners. The non-profit boards on which I served were called. The Bishop and a member of the Standing Committee spent hours sitting in the church kitchen interviewing any parishioner who wanted to talk. It was finally decided that there was nothing wrong with the conduct of my ministry, that support for me in the parish was 2:1, and without the Vestry members and their families is was 3:1. The Bishop declared that I should stay, but that there were issues the Vestry needed to deal with, including restoring my salary.

Eventually the Vestry voted to remove the Church of the Redeemer, its property and assets, out of the Diocese of New Hampshire and the Episcopal Church. Thereupon the Bishop and Standing Committee, acting in lieu of the Diocesan Convention, made Redeemer a mission, removed the Vestry from office, and appointed me the Vicar. At this point, about one-third of the parish left to form a "continuing Anglican" congregation. Yet, about a third had also left simply because they had no stomach for the fight. In the aftermath, the Bishop required me to keep the promise of not changing anything until January of 1989. That summer two men from the group that had left were arrested and convicted of felonious sexual assault on minor children, one of the same sex, one of the opposite sex.

The following fall the group that remained pledged and raised an amount equal to what had been pledged and received the year before the schism. The food pantry was moved to Redeemer, and the people of Redeemer became involved in the town soup kitchen and helped start a Habitat for Humanity chapter. I remained three years more, and when I left I thought it would be good for the parishioners to have a Rector who had not been through the schism.

I wish this story had a happy ending, but it does not. I cannot comment on what happened at the Church of the Redeemer in the years after I left. But after Gene Robinson became Bishop of New Hampshire many of the remaining members of Redeemer left, and the parish has been forced to close. Now there is no Episcopal Church in Rochester where girls can be acolytes or women serve as Lectors. There is a well financed "continuing Anglican" Church, but they continued to have their fights as well. The three ring leaders who led the schism did not want to join any denomination but were finally overwhelmed by an Annual Meeting where one lady reportedly said, "I'm still not sure why we left Redeemer and the Episcopal Church. I do know we're supposed to have a bishop of some kind!" Their new priest even came to talk with me once to get help in dealing with his parish. I would run into former parishioners around town who would hug me and say how sorry they were that the split had to happen and that they missed me and people at Redeemer.

Those of you reading this will draw your own conclusions about the conduct of everyone involved. Bp. Theuner, Gene Robinson and I suggested a pause in further action displaying an attempt at goodwill. But it did not keep the schism from happening. In our current situation we are being told that a pause will keep schism from happening. I'm tempted to test the theory, yet my learning is that if people want a schism they'll get one. If they don't, they'll find a way to work it out. Ultimately schism does not get either side what it wants. Staying together doesn't get everyone what they want either, but they're not getting it together. I think God has set things up that way.

The Very Rev. G. Thomas Luck is Dean and Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Syracuse, NY. Reprinted with permission of the author.
print this article	comment on article