jQuery Slider

You are here

Bishop dismisses leadership of Versailles church

Bishop dismisses leadership of Versailles church

ST. JOHN'S EPISCOPAL MEMBERS FORM NEW CONGREGATION
By Frank E. Lockwood
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

VERSAILLES - The leadership of an Episcopal parish opposed to the
ordination of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson has been dismissed by
Lexington diocesan officials.

St. John's Episcopal Church, a place where heads of state have worshiped,
has been downgraded from a parish to a mission. The move allows Bishop
Stacy Sauls to dismiss the congregation's leadership and provide "direct
pastoral supervision" of the body.

The move split the church and led to the creation of a new, independent
congregation.

Sauls said the diocese's executive council empowered him to take control of
the conservative parish last week, because the council feared that the
parish's nine-member governing board would leave Episcopal Church USA
(ECUSA) and take away church property and bank accounts worth $1.87
million. Sauls said members of St. John's who want to remain in the ECUSA
asked him to intervene.

"I'm very concerned that if we had not done this, the group of loyal
Episcopalians would have lost their church, and the leadership of the
diocese could not allow that to happen," Sauls said. "I think all the signs
indicated there was a significant risk that they were days away from
leaving the church."

But the dismissed members of the parish's governing board, called a vestry,
say they never planned to take the assets and weren't preparing to abandon
the denomination.

Instead, the parish was hoping the ECUSA would allow it and other
traditionalist parishes in more liberal dioceses across the country to
receive "alternative episcopal oversight" from more conservative bishops.

Tom Thornbury, the top governing official of St. John's until the vestry
was disbanded, called Sauls' intervention painful, punitive and unnecessary.

In a statement read at Sunday's services, Thornbury said Sauls' actions
have been "destructive to individual families within our parish, to the
unity of the parish, and the diocese as a whole."

"As a bishop, this man is expected to lead his flock, not beat it into
submission," Thornbury said. "The only reason we can imagine why this
bishop would act in such an ... unethical manner towards us is his deep
animosity towards evangelical and orthodox Anglicans."

Sauls denies any animosity and said he is committed to working with
conservatives and liberals alike.

It's unclear how many people St. John's is losing, although Sauls said
yesterday it may have lost a majority of its members. The church's average
attendance was about 150.

St. John's has been a fixture on Versailles' Main Street for more than 150
years. Two of its rectors became bishops of Lexington. Over the years, St.
John's visitors have included President George Herbert Walker Bush and
Elizabeth II, the Queen of England and the Defender of the (Anglican) Faith.

But for the past decade, relations between St. John's and diocesan
leadership had "deteriorated," Sauls said.

After the denomination's general convention allowed an openly gay man,
Lexington native Gene Robinson, to become a bishop, relations got worse.
The church protested Sauls' vote supporting Robinson.

Then, the Versailles parish, which was seeking to hire a new priest (known
as a rector), kept Sauls in the dark as it went about its search, the
bishop said. The vestry eventually selected a finalist to lead St. John's
without consulting with Sauls first, the bishop said.

Former leaders of St. John's say they followed ECUSA rules while going
about their search. They now plan to focus on church-building, not lawsuits.

"Mud slinging is not the answer, and we're not going to partake in that,"
said former junior warden Paul Afdahl.

Pat Ewing, an Episcopalian for seven decades, says she'll join the new
congregation once it finds a place to worship. "We're getting rid of all
that old baggage we had, and we're going into a new church where we'll be
able to ... open up our Bibles, and go by what the Bible says," she said.

The Rev. Philip Haug, interim minister-in-charge at St. John's, said he has
confidence in Sauls. "He has a difficult job ... and he's doing it the way
he thought was right and best for the future of the church. He has my full
support."

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/7705218.htm

Subscribe
Get a bi-weekly summary of Anglican news from around the world.
comments powered by Disqus
Trinity School for Ministry
Go To Top