Bishops prepare for Camp Allen gathering; Schofield posts letter of resignation from House of Bishops
Episcopal News Service. March 6, 2008 [030608-04]
Pat McCaughan, Correspondent for Episcopal Life Media in Province VIII
When the House of Bishops gathers for its Camp Allen meeting in Navasota, Texas March 7-12, the agenda will focus on the upcoming July 16-August 3 Lambeth Conference and to engage in faith-based reconciliation training.
The Rev. Canon Brian Cox, rector of Christ the King Church in Santa Barbara, California, and a founder of reconcilers.net, who will lead the bishops in a reconciliation retreat, said, "The expectation is (to begin) thinking about how reconciliation can really become the culture of the Episcopal Church."
"We hope to stimulate a conversation in the House of Bishops about the place of reconciliation in the culture of the Episcopal Church," said Cox, who has engaged 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 in an earlier interview.
He has also 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.
Cox will lead the bishops' retreat along with the Hon. Joanne O'Donnell, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who has served as a leader of faith-based reconciliation trainings with Cox for about six years, he said.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has named Cox as an interim pastoral presence in the Stockton-based Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin.
Bishops are also expected to determine whether or not Bishop John-David Schofield of San Joaquin has abandoned the communion of The Episcopal Church (TEC). If a majority of bishops decide that Schofield has abandoned the communion, the Presiding Bishop will be canonically required to declare the see vacant and appoint a provisional bishop.
It is the last step expected in a process that began with the December 8 convention vote of the Central California diocese to leave TEC and realign with the Province of the Southern Cone. A series of developments followed: a Title IV Review Committee determined that Schofield had abandoned the communion; the Presiding Bishop informed the standing committee elected in December that they were no longer recognized as that body; a steering committee was appointed to organize an anticipated March 29 special convention to elect a provisional bishop.
The Presiding Bishop appointed the Rev. Canon Robert Moore, and then Cox, as an interim pastoral presence.
Schofield sent a letter, dated March 1, to Jefferts Schori, resigning from TEC's House of Bishops. It was unclear if the letter would have any effect on the House of Bishops' deliberations.
"Rather than force the House of Bishops to a vote, I herewith tender my resignation as a member of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church effective midnight EST, March 7, 2008," Schofield said in the letter.
"The Episcopal Church and Bishop [Jefferts] Schori will remain in my prayers and the prayers of all parishes and missions in the Diocese of San Joaquin. The door of reconciliation will always be open," he added.
Schofield also asserted that "I am a bishop in the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone and I am the Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin. The Episcopal Church has no jurisdiction or authority to affect my status in any of these capacities."
Schofield was not in the office on March 6, said the Rev. Van McAlister, a spokesperson for the diocese, McAlister confirmed that Schofield had sent a letter of resignation to the House of Bishops.
"The letter will be posted on the diocesan website any time now," McAlister said. He added that Schofield wrote it "because he felt like it was important to provide a formal response and he wanted to have that response out there before people wasted a lot of time on it at the House of Bishops."
Neva Rae Fox, a spokesperson for Jefferts Schori, said the Presiding Bishop's Office had not yet received the letter by the afternoon of March 6.