PITTSBURGH: St. Francis' parish leader departs church, leaves property
Episcopal News Service. January 24, 2008 [012408-05]
The Rev. Mark Zimmerman, rector of St. Francis-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Somerset, Pennsylvania, announced January 18 that he is leaving the parish to create Somerset Anglican Fellowship.
Zimmerman and St. Francis' members who followed his lead began meeting as the Somerset Anglican Fellowship on January 20, according to a statement on the Diocese of Pittsburgh website. "Both the mother and daughter congregations plan to continue in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh," the statement said.
The new congregation came about as members of St. Francis assessed their relationship to the wider Episcopal Church, according to the statement, and many, led by Zimmerman, "desired immediate action to separate from the national church."
"Others, while deeply disturbed with the direction of the national church, wished to take a slower course," the statement continued. "Instead of adopting a 'winner take-all' approach, the two groups agreed that it would be best for both groups to simply form two congregations."
Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan praised the decision.
“We have many multiple-congregation communities in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh," he said. "In a large number of those cases, especially in situations like this where the congregations in question embody different strengths, God blesses both bodies. We will work and pray to see that happen in Somerset.”
The Associated Press reported that Zimmerman and his followers may instead join with St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in Somerset, which voted last month to cut its ties to Presbyterian Church USA and join the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Several other Presbyterian churches in the Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania region have voted in recent months to split from the national Presbyterian Church USA and follow a more evangelical teaching of the bible. Lawsuits over church property and other issues remain, the AP reported.
"As in most religious communities, there are current issues in the Episcopal Church that are being faced, discussed and acted upon on an international, national, state, diocesan and local level," Zimmerman said in a statement quoted by the AP. "Suffice it to say there have been two primary groups at St. Francis who now desire to follow separate paths along a fork in the road," it added.
Parishes remain part of the Episcopal Church even when local leaders and/or a number of parishioners opt to leave the denomination as a matter of personal choice.