San Joaquin steering committee represents 'broad theological spectrum'
Episcopal News Service. February 11, 2008 [021108-03]
Pat McCaughan
A steering committee has been appointed to begin to reconstitute the Fresno-based Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, while a second priest has been appointed as "interim pastoral presence" in the Central California Valley diocese.
"The steering committee has been formed and there are about 20 people involved," said the Rev. Canon Robert Moore, appointed by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as an interim pastoral presence late last year.
"It is important for people both inside and outside California to understand that this committee represents a broad spectrum of theological positions," Moore said. "We are really trying to stay away from designations like liberal and conservative, because it is very important to the Presiding Bishop that it be a representative group of people."
Moore confirmed that the Rev. Canon Brian Cox, 16-year rector of Christ the King Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara in the Diocese of Los Angeles, also has been appointed as an interim pastoral presence in San Joaquin.
"He is, by his own description, a well-known conservative and trained in reconciliation work," Moore said. "The hope is that he will be able to reach out to additional folks. He and I are now beginning a healing kind of reconciliation process," he added.
Listening tour
Both Moore and Cox will embark upon a four-day listening tour beginning February 19 "with ears and hearts," Moore said. "We want to talk to as many people as we possibly can." Details for that trip were still being finalized, Moore added. He said a letter had been sent to clergy within the Diocese of San Joaquin promoting the event and encouraging both clergy and lay participation.
"As we move on, our task is to reach out as much as we can to the people," particularly those who may still be undecided or confused about their options, Moore said.
Cox said that during the listening tour he hopes "to meet people from all perspectives, to earn their trust and to sort out the dimensions of the conflict in the Diocese of San Joaquin."
"The goal of our efforts is to heal, reconcile and reconstitute the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin," Cox said, noting that there is "a strong possibility that we will utilize the faith-based reconciliation seminars" which he began in 1997.
Cox added: "The Presiding Bishop and others are well aware of the kind of work I've done, and I think somebody with the kind of experience I've had in identity-based conflict and reconciliation was really needed here."
Cox has conducted faith-based reconciliation training and seminars in the Middle East, the Sudan, Kashmir, Burundi and Korea. In October 2007 he led a reconciliation seminar in Cyprus, "bringing together Syrian and Jordanian Muslims with American evangelical Christians. And what we were trying to do is create a religious framework for peacemaking to augment the official peace negotiations," he said.
He also has worked with Christian and Muslim Palestinians in the Bethlehem region and will lead a national training event May 19-21 in Los Angeles, focusing on the Episcopal Church's role in the Middle East, he said.
Steering committee
Michael Glass, a San Rafael, California attorney who is representing some of the continuing Episcopalians, confirmed the steering committee's organization and its role in helping to organize the special convention.
The steering committee includes a cleric and a layperson from each of continuing Episcopal congregations, as well as others. During the next few weeks, it will organize by subcommittee, Moore said.
A steering committee roster has not yet been announced.
The steering committee has been formed to assist the Presiding Bishop "in this interim period as the people organizing the diocese to go forward," Moore said. "We're in this unusual position of having no bishop and no ecclesiastical authority."
The Presiding Bishop on January 11 inhibited Bishop John-David Schofield after a Title IV Review Committee certified that he had abandoned the communion. On January 25, she wrote to members of the standing committee who, along with Schofield, had in December 2007 voted to realign the Central California diocese with the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.
The Presiding Bishop's letter, delivered January 26 to the committee's eight members, cited that vote as a violation of church canons. "In light of your actions, I find that you have been and are unable to well and faithfully fulfill your duties as members of the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin under Canon I.17.8," Jefferts Schori wrote. Canon I.17.8 provides that anyone accepting an office in the church "shall well and faithfully perform the duties of that office in accordance with the constitution and canons of this church and of the Diocese in which the office is being exercised."
The Presiding Bishop's letter further cited the members' attempts to reorganize as a standing committee within the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone -- action taken amid a lack of public dissention regarding attempts to remove the diocese from The Episcopal Church (TEC).
Unconfirmed reports circulated the same week that Schofield had, himself, fired six of the eight-member standing committee who, although supportive of disaffiliation with TEC, questioned the move to the Southern Cone. Because of their doubts, Schofield in a statement on the diocesan website, had allegedly determined they were unable to serve. The Province of the Southern Cone represents 22,000 members in congregations throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
On February 1, several of those members asserted their status "as the ecclesiastical authority of the diocese in the event the House of Bishops chooses to depose Bishop John-David Schofield."
The letter also acknowledged the Presiding Bishop's personal opinion of their status, but claimed that "the office of Presiding Bishop does not have the legal, canonical or moral authority to proclaim for the Episcopal Church non-recognition of duly elected members of a diocesan Standing Committee. Without having any canonical or constitutional authority to refuse to recognize us, we cannot accept your opinion as changing our status as the canonical Standing Committee of the Diocese."
The letter, posted on various websites, was signed by: the Very Rev. Canon James L. Snell, rector of St. Columba's, Fresno; the Very Rev. Richard James, rector of St. Paul's, Visalia; the Rev. Michael E. McClenaghan, rector of St. Paul's, Modesto; and the Rev. Robert G. Eaton, rector of St. John's, Tulare; Kim Robinson of Visalia; and Tom Wright of Modesto.
Schofield was given two months to reconsider his decision to realign with the Province of the Southern Cone. If he fails to do so, and if a majority of the House of Bishops at its March 7-13 Camp Allen meeting in Navasota, Texas, concurs that he has abandoned the Communion, the Presiding Bishop must depose him. She would declare the episcopate of the diocese vacant, paving the way for the steering committee to convene a special convention at which a provisional bishop will be elected, Moore said.
Jefferts Schori held out the possibility of reconciliation to standing committee members. "A future declaration of adherence to the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church, and, for clergy, a reaffirmation of the Declaration of Conformity, will once again make you eligible for election to office in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin," she said in the letter to standing committee members. "I give thanks for your service in the past, and pray that it may once again be a blessing to this Diocese."
Continuing Episcopal congregations include: St. John the Baptist, Lodi; St. Anne's, Stockton; St. Matthew's, San Andreas; Holy Family, Fresno; Church of the Saviour, Hanford. There are groups of continuing Episcopalians meeting in other faith communities in Atwater, Madera, Turlock, Bakersfield, Sonora, as well as regional meetings. For more information about meeting locations and times, visit the website.