The Work Goes On, The Cause Endures: Diocese of Pittsburgh (Southern Cone) Convention, November 7, 2008

With apologies to Teddy Kennedy almost thirty years ago, the second day of the special convention convened today to reelect Robert William Duncan as Bishop of Pittsburgh. "We've all been waiting so long," declared Christopher Leighton, rector of St. Paul's, Darien (Connecticut), a member of Trinity School for Ministry's first graduating class, who headed one of three visiting delegations from parishes outside Pittsburgh, and most of those present undoubtedly agreed.

Convention delegates agreed unanimously to make their selection by paper ballot. Prior to reading aloud the relevant statutes, the Chancellor quipped that it had been suggested "that we read this responsively by whole verse." Gladys Hunt Mason of St. Stephen's, McKeesport (a parish that has opted not to realign) presented the report of the nominating committee, which "unanimously and with great joy" recommended Bob Duncan for the position. There being no nominations from the floor, the Veni Creator Spiritus was sung and the ballot cast. It was announced that Bob Duncan had received 78 of 79 clerical ballots (one was invalid) and 100 of 100 lay ballots - blessed unanimity! Bishop Scriven read aloud a letter from Primate Gregory Venables commending the election as a "positive and significant step in the advance of the Gospel." Did the bishop-elect accept his election? Standing Committee President David Wilson inquired. "I have a few things to say," the bishop-elect replied.

He did indeed. After thanks to the Standing Committee for the 50 days (take note) that they had stood guard in his absence and to the diocesan staff, +Bob brought his wife Nara up on stage and commended her to our prayers. Given the Bob Duncan buttons that had made an appearance after his deposition, he suggested an updated version inscribed "He's Back!"

He spoke of the past, most especially of John Kerfoot, the first bishop of Pittsburgh who strove for reconciliation at the first post-Civil War General Convention, but also of the future. There is no time to wait to recover from recent traumas, he insisted, but rather we must get on with the mission. At the 1995 convention that elected him bishop, so many spoke of the extraordinary sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit, even when the diocese had been terribly divided. "We're not divided any more . . . we're free and without excuse not to do mission. Will you join me in the mission? Are you willing to do it?" He invited all those willing so to commit to rise. When all did, he observed quietly: "Then I consent."

There followed presentations both from the new parishes admitted in October and from some of the outside observers. The latter included Anglicans from Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia (Christ Church, Savannah), New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia as well a our "sister congregation" at Christ Church, Grove Farm. What we're doing, the Bishop went on, carries a cost, as witness the Pittsburgh priest recently expelled from Connecticut for voting in favor of realignment, but it served as a beacon for Christians throughout the world. Indeed, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington (the former Catholic Bishop of Pittsburgh) had called him just before the convention to let Duncan know he would be praying for him.

Jenni Bartling, overseer of new church plants, spoke of how she had felt "postpartum blues" on behalf of her new congregations who had received only cursory attention in October. The four new congregations and three other plants over the past seven years testified that "moving forward in mission" was not empty rhetoric in Pittsburgh and the congregational leaders echoed her sentiments. From Seeds of Hope, Bloomfield a reminder that if you want families and children in your congregations you need to do child and youth ministry. From Grace Anglican, Slippery Rock, an emphasis on the need for constant prayer, which could turn a community of eight into a congregation of 150, most of them tithing and 40 percent organized in cell groups, and ten people considering ordination (five of them since the realignment vote). From Charis 247, Coraopolis, a reminder of the need to build community relationships (Practice, Pray and Partner). Finally, from Somerset Anglican Fellowship - this I really liked - a reminder that it is possible to leave everything except the people and still grow. "Getting rid of the building has turned out to be a blessing in our case," declared their spokesman and they still wish the 20 percent of the congregation who opted to remain with TEC well and continue to pray for their spiritual health and well-being.

And then the outsiders. Christopher Leighton from St. Paul's, Darien, where the renewal movement had some of its earliest beginnings, noted that his congregation was currently engaged in planting two new Anglican congregations and thanked his former diocese for its leadership. Art Ward from St. Bartholomew's, Tonawanda, New York, spoke from the perspective of a congregation who chose to leave everything behind and noted the "gracious" behavior of their reappraising bishop on the issue. This had been the year to choose, he said, and if staying was not an option, neither was litigation. Finally David Drake of Holy Trinity, Raleigh, North Carolina: "People who are wounded can still preach the Gospel . . . I had never seen people come to Christ in a church before."

Given the asides that had been dropped throughout these presentations, Bishop Duncan at one point took the stand to address the question of a new province. It was "very near" he said, and recognition might come as early as December. Certainly, it is hoped that a draft constitution will be presented at the December meeting of the Common Cause Partnership. Proceedings were closed with Geoff Chapman introducing a Sense of the House resolution that parishes and diocesan bodies prayerfully consider the Jerusalem Declaration as a standard of faith to be adopted at the next regular diocesan convention, should delegates so approve. On that note convention was adjourned with delegates admonished to sign the testimonials on Bishop Duncan's behalf required by the Province of the Southern Cone.

Notable and Quotable

There will come a time, God willing, when we can look back on these years with some measure of detachment and perspective, and consider ourselves wiser and maybe even holier for having lived through them. May that day be hastened.

Fr. Dan Martins

http://cariocaconfessions.blogspot.com/2008/10/naming-names-as-sadness-continues.html

Episcopal Dawn, Anglican Sunset: A Scholar's Reflections on Pittsburgh's Episcopal Experience

This lecture was delivered at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Highland Park,
Pittsburgh, on October 17, 2008. My thanks to Bruce Robison and all those who attended.

“The effectiveness of the Episcopal Church is hampered by its own peculiar faults.” So spoke the Bishop of Pittsburgh not in 1985 or 1995, but in 1955. “In some quarters it bogs down in ritualistic trivialities and dissensions over unimportant issues. In other places, it becomes deflected from its goal by what amounts to an idolatry of scholarship and biblical criticism. Or again, the energies of the Episcopal Church become drained off by the belief that the future of the faith hinges upon new educational techniques and round table discussions. Or the Church may become so broad and liberal that it agrees with everybody and stands for nothing.” [1] Such sentiments, it would appear, have a longer lineage than one might imagine from casual perusal of today’s newspaper headlines.

It is both a privilege and a pleasure to address you tonight on the subject of 250 years of Anglican and Episcopal history and witness in this comparatively remote corner of western Pennsylvania. History is being made and never more so than in the past five years as global Anglicanism has reeled from crisis to crisis and relationships between provinces, dioceses and parishes have been irrevocably altered. A mere 20,000 Christians we may be, but we enjoy a notoriety out of all proportion to our numbers not just in the United States but across the world.

I would like to begin with an expression of thanks to Bruce Robison and the Adult Programs Committee of St. Andrew's Church. I know of no better place to address some of the present ambiguities of our situation – less than two weeks from the historic vote on realignment – than in a heterogeneous parish that has chosen to remain Episcopal. Next in importance – though first in my heart – my wife Jennifer, who, in addition to being the principal breadwinner, has had to endure four years of married life in which “churchy” affairs have formed a frequent topic of conversation (or perhaps monologue would express it better).

To the newest Bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone, I am grateful both that he considered it worthwhile to commission an official history and that, having done so, he refrained from seeking to exercise editorial judgments. In the course of two years, the only criticism Bob Duncan ever offered of my work was that he would like to see more attention given to the earliest phase of Anglican mission work, a criticism to which, I suspect, even the most ardent progressive would have little objection. As a scholar, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the contribution of the diocesan archivist. Lynne Wohleber’s commitment to archival preservation, despite the limited resources with which she has been gifted, is worthy of high praise. Finally, every pledging member of the Diocese of Pittsburgh contributed to the stipend that I received between 2005 and 2007, an addition to our household income that was gratefully received. I hope that when our history is published in its entirety by Wipf and Stock next year, all will feel that this was money well spent.

For me, this project has had both a personal and a professional aspect. I have been a member of Trinity Cathedral – which recently adopted a unique approach to the problem of governance in a post-realignment era – have served on its Chapter and have been a delegate to Diocesan Convention. Even those aware of my Communion Conservative tendencies may well be inclined to assume that the diocesan history is a puff piece intended to validate the course pursued by Robert Duncan in his years as Bishop. While I esteem Bishop Duncan and share many of the concerns that he has expressed over the years, I have had occasion to differ with him on a number of issues and have continued to entertain reservations about the wisdom of realignment even as I have come to accept its historical inevitability.

Those who read my account of this year’s convention proceedings will have noted how I prefaced it with an extract from the last chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, in which the Elves, accompanied by Frodo, Bilbo and Gandalf, depart into the West, leaving Sam to mourn their departure on the shores of Middle Earth. The scene amply captures own feelings as I watched the 2008 convention proceed to its denouement. If you prefer a Biblical analogy, consider that passage from Deuteronomy, where Moses, foremost among the Prophets, is denied entry to the Promised Land on account of his faithlessness at Meribah, even while the Lord permits him a vision of what will be.

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. [2]

In a touching pre-convention message, Joseph Martin, rector of Church of Our Savior in Glenshaw, wrote of how God had emancipated him from his fear of leaving the Episcopal Church, where all doubts boiled down to one essential question: “What will ministry life be like outside of the comfort, security, and status I had known all my life in the Episcopal Church? A question I had talked a good game about but never really faced seriously, and it was daunting.” [3] I have no doubt of the genuineness of his conviction and call, and yet I also do not doubt the convictions of those who find the view from the Anglican Pisgah as remote as did Moses. Since at least 2006 many diocesan leaders have preferred to stress the potential of new beginnings rather than lament what is, for them, already lost. Most of them, as Philip Wainwright, rector of St. Peter’s, Brentwood, so eloquently noted at St. Martin’s, Monroeville, have been engaged in an increasingly rearguard action for most of their adult life and perhaps welcome the opportunity finally to be free of constraint and conflict.

It is not the historian’s task to predict the future but rather to focus on what is passing. In some respects, the assertions frequently made in discussions of realignment over the past five years – that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has not changed its position, but stands where it has always stood – seem to me misleading. While the Episcopal Church in the past half-century moved a considerable distance from what church historian Robert Prichard has called the “Mere Christianity” consensus of the 1920s, [4] postwar Pittsburgh did not remain in ecclesiological stasis in the meantime. In a world where the definition of Anglican is increasingly contested – not least because Anglicanism no longer boasts a source of ultimate authority that commands universal respect – Pittsburgh Episcopalians have contributed their mite to redefining it. It is easy, too easy, merely to note the conflicts between the liberal minority in this diocese and their conservative counterparts, but ecclesiological conflict is not confined to simple liberal/conservative dichotomies.

If you doubt me, take Ohio River Boulevard to Sewickley, where you may stand in the lobby of St. Stephen’s Church and marvel at the throng that gathers to worship God in contemporary liturgy and praise music. Then follow the signs that point south and east to Charleroi, climb the steep Mon Valley hill and enter that shrine to working class Anglo Catholicism. Geoff Chapman and Bill Illgenfritz today, John Guest and Joseph Wittkofski forty years ago, practitioners of two traditions, both deeply rooted in the Anglican way and completely incompatible in terms of nineteenth century theology! And if we argue that both still express the essentials of the faith, then how do we account for those conservatives who today have chosen not to follow the path of realignment? Sometimes it is not the open opponent but “our companion, our guide and our own familiar friend,” [5] whose perceived betrayal hurts the most.

Renewal, at its best, begins with a consciousness of the Cross on which sinful thoughts and wills are crucified, a theology that stands in radical contrast with the liberal Protestant view famously – and critically – defined by the Neo-Orthodox theologian Richard Niebuhr that “a God without Wrath brought Man without Sin into a Kingdom without Judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” [6] Sinfulness remains a universal constant, as Bishop Duncan pointed out at this year’s Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem: “Over the last five decades,” he testified, “we have made more than our share of compromises when issues of Scriptural Truth were debated or challenged . . . Moreover, the witness of our personal lives has been scarcely better than the record of those whom we now forthrightly confront: divorce and remarriage, sexual sin, addiction, material possessions, careerism, children who wander far. Further to our shame, we have sometimes as orthodox battled one another – splintering into factions and sects, competing with one another for territory or adherents, even at times condemning one another – publicly proclaiming the Truth while privately operating for our own advantage. So it is not just the progressives who have allowed sin to masquerade as righteousness, but sometimes the orthodox as well that have disgraced, disrupted and divided the whole Anglican Communion.” [7]

For the last few years, I have been uniquely privileged as a historian, to write a work of historical context for an ecclesiastical organization undergoing the most profound transformation of its 142-year history. While I sat in a little side office and read issues of the diocesan newspaper from more than 100 years earlier, I could overhear conference calls with other Anglican Communion Network bishops (rarely the substance, unfortunately). From time to time the arch purveyor of diocesan propaganda – that is to say our esteemed director of communications – would intrude his head to inquire what tidbit of diocesan scandal from far-off days was currently preoccupying me. So I sat and recorded history, while all around history was being made. Four years ago, as my wife and I prepared to move to Pittsburgh, I knew next to nothing about the diocese (though I confess that Bob Duncan’s name was not entirely unknown to me). It has been an interesting journey.

What then of my title? Episcopal Dawn is, I hope, self-explanatory. With much of this region barely settled during the 1790s, the birth of the Episcopal Church and the emergence of an Anglican witness largely coincided. That pattern held in Pittsburgh for over 150 years: a strong Evangelical presence in the early nineteenth century gradually supplanted by a more Anglo Catholic outlook; an embrace of the Social Gospel – though hardly on the scale of some other urban dioceses – during the early twentieth century; and a period of contraction during the 1920s and 1930s.

Revival during the 1950s, while owing something to the positive demographic trends that sustained much postwar Episcopal resurgence, proved significantly different in Pittsburgh than in other parts of the Episcopal Church. The twin presences of Bishop Austin Pardue and Sam Shoemaker fostered the cultivation of a prayer-centered Anglican culture considerably more introspective and personally transforming than the more mainstream spiritual nostrums of Norman Vincent Peale. The notion of a local witness intended to convert the broader culture was thus birthed in Pittsburgh twenty years before the diocese had begun to gain its present notoriety in religious circles as a center of the parachurch movement. “It is encouraging,” remarked Bishop Pardue in 1966, “to see how many new and expanded ministries have developed within the Diocese. They are not Diocesan initiatives and for them the Diocese has no financial responsibility. . . . Yet, they are fostered by our clergy and lay people and by individual parishes and missions of zeal and vision.” [8]

The contributions of undertakings as diverse as the Pittsburgh Experiment, Trinity School for Ministry, the South American Missionary Society, Anglicans for Life and Rock the World Youth Alliance should not blind us to the realities inherent in this form of spiritual identity. What developed in Pittsburgh during the 1970s and 1980s was a profoundly different understanding of “being church” from that found in most Episcopal dioceses. Its strengths were and are undeniable. It meets the unchurched where they are and focuses on bringing them into right relationship with their Lord and Savior. It confronts secular culture, refusing to make concessions on matters of doctrine merely to conciliate the secularist. Finally, it undercuts the fatal tendency of institutional Protestantism to descend into bureaucratic obscurantism by keeping its organization simple and suiting its structures to the task at hand.

Such discipleship is of a high order and yet through it runs potential contradictions, the same that drove the Reformed Episcopalians into schism. Modern Evangelicalism operates within the context of a wider conservative American Protestantism. Sometimes the suggestion that “they’re not really Anglicans” can be understood as a coded attempt to remove conservative voices from the debate, but the present discussion of the “two integrities” on female ordination inherent in the realigning movement testifies to enduring tensions. “People have a deep need to express their faith in ways that are culturally relevant to them,” observed one Evangelical priest in 1992, “we don’t really need pipe organs and medieval dress and archaic language and music.” [9] Taken at face value, such observations reflect an obliviousness to the fact that an attachment to the “archaic” can be its own form of religious counter-culture, if it is a truly lived experience and not merely a liturgical performance.

Such pronouncements could be heard as early as the 1970s. The future Bishop of Central Florida, John Howe, then a fiery Pittsburgh-based Evangelical, caused some alarm in 1973 with his denunciations of established Episcopalianism. “Our churches,” he observed, “are ‘filled’ with baptized, confirmed, committee-serving, Sunday School-teaching, bill-paying, loyal Episcopalians who have never been reborn of the Spirit. And it usually isn’t their fault. How will they be converted unless we preach conversion? And why would we ever preach conversion if we shared [the] opinion that they don’t need it?” [10] In response, the Pittsburgh writer Emily Gardiner Neal savaged Howe as a “reformed Protestant minister, who has totally rejected Sacramental principles.” Let it be noted here that Neal was no liberal; an Anglo Catholic who had authored books on devotionalism, she was strongly to oppose the Episcopal Church’s decision to ordain women to the priesthood. [11]

It is in this context, then, that I would speak of Anglican Sunset, even as the more fervent proponents of realignment would doubtless prefer “Episcopal Sunset, Anglican Dawn.” Anglican identity is changing even as we sit here and we are party to that transformation. The global reformation is at our door, as postcolonial Anglicanism assumes the driving seat. For some, however, reformation and realignment increasingly take on the character of the view from Pisgah. There is an element of tragedy amid the promise, one which I think we would all do well to appropriate. Too often, the eagerness to be gone clouds awareness of the heritage that will be sacrificed on the altar of fidelity. It is sometimes hard to escape the feeling that the legacies of Kemper, Huntington and Brent may be unavoidable casualties of the realignment process.

What then has Anglican identity meant for Pittsburgh Episcopalians down the years and what does it mean today? We all claim the identity as our heritage, but in vastly different ways. “From its origin immediately following the American Revolution,” declared the rector of Calvary Church in February 2007, “until this date the heart and soul of this church is that it is an American church based upon democratic self-determination, American morality and not subject to foreign domination . . . . Since the 1780s, our church has been predicated upon American values and American morality. The American value system and the evolving American concept of non-discrimination should govern our future as they have our past.” [12]

“We call ourselves Anglicans,” the Bishop of Pittsburgh observed in Jerusalem in June. “Canterbury (Ecclesia Anglicana) achieved dominance in the first millennium . . . in the second millennium, the British Church (and her colonies, in turn) took the Gospel across North America, Australia, Africa, South America, Asia and to the ends of the earth . . . What is remarkable next, however, are the astoundingly British and overwhelmingly Western (Caucasian) systems that guide the thirty-eight Provinces of this worldwide Christian family as the third millennium begins. This ecclesiological framework has now become an obstacle to the story.” [13]

Here, then, is the classical division between what church historian Miranda Hassett recently called diversity globalism and accountability globalism, [14] in which proponents of the latter strive to shake off that peculiar relationship with the secular state which the Church of England bequeathed to its daughter church in the Americas in the form of the “national church idea,” a vision of Anglicanism as a communion of nationally distinct ecclesiastical bodies united in a common expression of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. From the mausoleum that housed the earthly residue of the national church idea has arisen a confessional fellowship spanning oceans and continents. “As long as the systems were working,” to quote Bishop Duncan once again, “as long as the systems were not obstacles to the story – there was little reason to question them.” [15]

So often is the notion of the birth of a new American Anglicanism established in 1789 brought to our attention that we sometimes forgot how much the Protestant Episcopal Church (as it was then known) retained a fascination with its English roots. When one considers how much of nineteenth century American religious history must be viewed through the lens of ethnocultural identity (German Catholic, Norwegian Lutheran, Dutch Reformed), it is not too much of a stretch to speak of an English Episcopalianism, understood less in terms of an immigrant church (though Pittsburgh could report a fair number of immigrant Anglicans) than in a mindset that continued to bind the church of a former colonial dependency to the mother church. “Ask them concerning the religion of their forefathers,” declared Joseph Doddridge, one of Western Pennsylvania’s first Episcopal evangelists, in 1816. “They all answer, they were Church people. Many of these people still retain an old Prayer Book as a venerable relic of antiquity. They still have a reverence for Baptism and the Lord’s Day. The Church, they say, was once pure and good, but it is now fallen, and, they fear, will never be revived again.” [16]

In 1875, Pittsburgh’s first bishop, John Kerfoot, swore to devote his energies to succoring the “old-country church people” drawn to the region by the promise of work in the iron and coal industries. It was Kerfoot who encouraged Church of England clergy to advise immigrants bound for America that the Protestant Episcopal Church was a constituent member of the Anglican family. He later persuaded Archbishop Tait of Canterbury to institute the practice of letters commendatory, issued by English clergy for their congregants to present to their Episcopal counterparts on arrival. [17] Several years later, on a visit to Greene County, Pittsburgh’s second bishop, Cortlandt Whitehead, met an Englishman who had resided in the district for thirty years without once seeing an Episcopal priest. Visibly moved, Whitehead baptized his six adult children and confirmed them together with their mother and the family then all received Holy Communion together. [18]

Awareness of the English presence was part and parcel of Pittsburgh’s Episcopal modus operandi well into the twentieth century. In May 1937, Trinity Cathedral hosted a service of thanksgiving for the accession of King George VI, attended by the British Consul in Pittsburgh. “I think, wrote one Wilkinsburg resident who attended the service, “that we have . . . a Consul who will mean something to us the British in Pittsburgh and one who will do his utmost for the cementing of good fellowship between the peoples of America and the British Empire.” [19] Only four years later, as Pittsburghers absorbed news of the devastation inflicted on London by the Blitz, the diocesan convention endorsed a resolution “extending its deepest sympathy with the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion in its titanic struggle to preserve Christianity for the world.” [20]

Continuity with the Church of England went only so far, of course. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the high church Anglo Catholic party was struggling to hold its own in England, its American counterpart was carrying all before it. In Pittsburgh, the first two episcopal leaders of the diocese helped consolidate the ascendancy of Anglo Catholicism over a 57-year period, despite a residual Evangelical presence. “Hearty Prayer-Book teaching and modes are everywhere here acceptable,’ Bishop Kerfoot warned a high church acquaintance in 1872, “but ‘advanced’ ideas and gestures make mischief right off. Such a man as you (sic) would call a little ‘Low’ who would be loyal to the Church and to this Diocese, and who is earnest and industrious, would do well.” [21] By the 1890s Evangelical influence was waning. They constantly asserted “the evil of High Churchmanship,” reported one observer, “and solemnly affirmed their opinion that every High Churchman was nothing more or less than a Jesuit in disguise.” [22] Symbolic of their decline was the defeat of efforts to prohibit the erection of a chapel or the appointment of a chaplain (whom Evangelicals feared would be a closet Romanist) at the new St. Margaret’s Memorial Hospital in 1890, a facility made possible by a generous bequest from Episcopal layman John Shoenberger. [23]

As the Progressive Era dawned, another English influence had secured a hold on the American Anglican imagination. [24] Promoted by such mainstream Episcopal leaders as William Reed Huntington, rector of Grace Church, New York, [25] the “national church idea” found favor with such Pittsburghers as Episcopal lawyer Hill Burgwin, who argued that the Protestant Episcopal Church should adopt the name, “The National Church of the United States .” Presbyterians and the Methodists lacked a national organization, Burgwin explained; Congregationalists and Baptists lacked a national territorial organization; and the Roman Catholics were as yet a missionary church. [26] Seven years later, the rector of Christ Church, Greensburg, voiced similar sentiments, while discussing a proposal to drop the word Protestant from the Church’s title. “[Why],” he demanded, “should this comparatively small branch of the one great Anglican Communion be the only branch that holds on to an epithet which . . . gives her a sectarian or denominational name?” [27] The popularity of the national church idea revealed the lingering attachment of many American Anglicans to notions of establishment, though its proponents sought to minimize this by suggesting that the Protestant Episcopal Church would serve merely as the vehicle for the reunion of the scattered strands of American Protestantism.

In the current political climate it has become increasingly difficult accurately to determine whether the national or global vision of Anglicanism prevailed in nineteenth (and indeed early twentieth) century America. Commenting on the 1899 ruling by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York against incense and processional lights, Bishop Whitehead emphasized that the American Church was in no way bound to take note of opinions generated by Lambeth Palace and further noted that the most recent General Convention had rejected a proposal to establish a board of arbitration under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury to consider questions submitted by the national churches. [28] Whitehead, however, wrote from the context of a church that had neither the means nor the desire to implement such state-sponsored measures as the Public Worship Regulation Act. Elsewhere he seemed to imply a rather different understanding of global ecclesiastical relationship. “[One] does not belong to St. Peter’s, St. John’s, St. Matthew’s parish; nor yet to the Diocese of Pittsburgh; nor indeed to the ‘P.E.C. of the U.S.A.’” declared a diocesan newspaper editorial (almost certainly composed by the Bishop) on the Pan Anglican Missionary Congress of 1908. “We are not baptized into these puny and ephemeral bodies, but into [the] great Holy Catholic Church.” [29]

Of all the bishops of Pittsburgh, only Whitehead’s successor, Alexander Mann, spoke unequivocally to a largely American idiom for Episcopal identity. “[Our] influence is out of all proportion to our numbers,” Mann observed in 1933, “and when the Episcopal Church speaks in her corporate capacity, no Christian Communion in the country commands more truly the attention of thoughtful men. We are one per cent of the population, we are thirty per cent of college and university students . . . We are too Catholic for some of our members and we are too Protestant for others. We are told that our position is illogical, but after all what is it but the position of the family, where one son is an extreme radical and one is an ultra conservative, but where all the children are held together by the bond of a common loyalty, a common love and trust. [30] Mann’s episcopate, however, largely coincided with the social and economic upheavals of the Great Depression. By the time he resigned his position in 1943 (the first Pittsburgh bishop not to die in office) circumstances had radically altered.

It has become an axiom of contemporary progressive discourse that during the 1970s and 1980s the Diocese of Pittsburgh was subject to a takeover by conservative elements not indigenous to the region. In this view, the broad and tolerant Anglicanism of Bishop Robert Appleyard (elected in 1967) gave way to the polarizing and sectarian Evangelicalism of Alden Hathaway (elected 1980) and Robert Duncan (elected 1995). For this shift much blame is also accorded Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, whose graduates are accused of infiltrating many mainstream parishes in southwestern Pennsylvania. Such sentiments were voiced as early as 1982 in a meeting of the diocesan Board of Examining Chaplains, according to the then secretary, David Jones. “This entire discussion,” he wrote, “opened a floodgate of words and emotions concerning Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. A number of strong feelings were articulated by a number of Board members: ‘I have a hard time even calling that place a seminary.” “They claim to be in the stream of Anglicanism – they aren’t.” “We shouldn’t send anyone there; how did the Bishop’s original policy change? There was a good deal of self-righteous indignation filling the room.’” [31]

For many progressives, contemporary Evangelicalism stands outside any recognized canon of Anglican belief. Writing in a recent online edition of Episcopal Life, Dr. Joan Gundersen of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh described the recently formed Somerset Anglican Fellowship, a breakaway group from St. Francis-in-the-Fields Church that opposed the latter’s decision not to realign, as “evangelical Presbyterians.” [32] While I do not doubt that many in that group would find common cause with conservative Presbyterianism, it is not clear to me that this disqualifies them from Anglican identity, if only because there are so few absolute theological benchmarks.

I still recall my amusement at reading an account of the landmark 1922 ordination service at devoutly mainstream Calvary Church, at which one of the participants was Frederick Emrich, a Congregationalist minister, marking the first time a representative of the Reformed tradition had participated in an Episcopal ordination. [33] Fast forward eighty-two years to 2004 and we find Bishop Duncan authorizing a bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church to confirm 13 candidates at St. Michael’s Church, Ligonier, a parish whose conservative rector has since confounded many by refusing to participate in realignment. [34] For good measure, I would note the comment of one Calvary parishioner in the early 1920s regarding his rector’s homilies. “The trouble with Mr. van Etten’s sermons,” he complained, “is that they are just as good for the Baptists as they are for us!” [35]

What then has been the reality of Anglican identity here in Pittsburgh in the recent past? My thesis, couched in more formal terms in a recently published Anglican and Episcopal History article, is that Pittsburgh’s shift from Episcopal mainstream to Anglican mainstream – from national to global, if you will – has been at least as much an indigenous development as the product of alien influences encroaching upon the ecclesiastical body politic. What took place between 1953 and 2003 owed as much to Bishop Austin Pardue and Samuel Moor Shoemaker of Calvary Church, as it did to Bishop Alden Hathaway and John Guest of St. Stephen’s, Sewickley.

It is a proud boast of contemporary Evangelicals that they seek to transform secular culture, not to conform to it. Such an undertaking is achieved not by ghettoization but by active engagement with the world around them, with a mobilized body of laypeople willing to share their faith with unchurched members of their community. In 1987, the senior warden of Prince of Peace mission in Hopewell testified that he had been brought into the Church as a result of the efforts of a group of laypeople who had made weekly visits to local neighborhoods. [36] The revival of St. Philip’s Church in Moon Township in the mid-1990s to become one of the largest congregations in the Diocese was also the result of a sustained program of evangelism and outreach. “These evangelism relationships are like plants,” declared the then rector. “They need a little water every day. If they don’t get watered, they’ll die.” [37]

Such activity is impressive but hardly novel. As early as 1952, Bishop Pardue had organized a diocesan commission on evangelism to send out teams of laymen “who have experienced a transformation in their lives by Christianity” to visit parishes and discuss that experience. These presentations frequently led to the establishment of prayer and Bible study groups at the parish level. [38] Another innovation of the 1950s – the parish life conference – also became popular in Pittsburgh. “What I found,” declared one participant “was the Church as a living, freedom-giving, heart-warming Reality – something I always knew existed but which I had never experienced with such intensity.” [39] Certain clergy also won their bishop’s warm approval. “[Father William] Bradbury,” Pardue noted approvingly in 1954, “has trained his people [Christ Church, North Hills] to be missionaries, but he himself sets a fabulous pace. They tell me that he is at the doorstep of every new home before the moving van arrives and that he ceaselessly and constantly rings doorbells and talks to everybody within miles of the church.” [40]

Specialist ministries to neglected groups have also been a hallmark of the Evangelical subculture. Those who have assisted at Uptown’s Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship, a congregation drawn almost exclusively from Pittsburgh’s homeless, are all too aware of the remarkable bonds that exist between the lightly-compensated clergy and lay leaders and the materially impoverished body of the congregation. Upriver, in economically straitened Ambridge, we find the socially diverse congregation of Church of the Savior, which began life in the living room of a Trinity School for Ministry seminarian. This is not your typical middle class Episcopal congregation, but a body of believers inspired by something more than a concern for liturgical propriety.

The territory may have changed since the 1950s but the search for innovative ministry has not, nor the desire to meet people where they are. Walter Righter, seeking to enter the ordination process in the early 1940s, was warned not to do so until Pardue had been installed “because [Bishop Mann] will insist you have an income of $2,400 a year or he won’t accept you.” Righter soon learned that his new bishop expected all future clergy candidates to spend a year working in a mill or factory to gain an understanding of working class culture, yet Pardue was not content simply to give his clergy a taste of working class life but sought to break through the crust of Episcopal custom to embrace the neglected communities of the Mon Valley. To take the Gospel to the lapsed Catholics of Charleroi and Donora was as potentially radical a step as any Episcopal Bishop of that day might have contemplated. [41]

The men Pardue found to answer that call proved more than equal to the task. Consider the case of Michael Budzanoski, an officer of the United Mine Workers and a member of St. Mary’s, Charleroi. “We cannot say that one side has been completely good while the other was wholly bad,” Budzanoski conceded in 1949. “The modern historian knows there have been selfish men on both sides . . . The threat of Communism may be having beneficial results among us. We’re being forced to make our Christianity into a living ideology.” [42] Equally striking is the story of Dave Griffith, the Homestead Works employee and CIO official who organized a committee to monitor workplace conditions during the 1950s that brought together representatives from the workforce, salaried employees and management, encouraged his co-workers to hold regular prayer meetings, and brought them to gatherings at Calvary Church where they mingled with the sons of privileged Episcopalians. [43] Crossing the class divide is nothing new for Pittsburgh Episcopalians.

Protesting racial injustice has been a notable entry in the progressive ledger and Pittsburgh’s progressives have reason to be proud of the achievement. “The Church is all kinds and all conditions of people,” Bishop Robert Appleyard pointed out in April 1968, “Here in our worship, here in our fellowship, we receive God’s friends to go out to the world, to go out to witness to the love, a love that we said in the Creed and in the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Our Father.’ We are then willing to comfort the family existing in its slum tenement, its ghetto, terrified by guns, by fire, by riots, by cockroaches, by utter filth . . . We can identify with those movements that have to do with good government, fair housing to all everywhere, equal rights and the highest standards of education for everyone. We can pray for those whose lives have become so bitter, so empty, so disconsolate, that they are not able to get down on their knees and pray. We can extend the fellowship of the Church into the lives and homes of those who have been rejected, those who have been forgotten, [those] who have been overlooked for years and years. [44]

Progressives had reason to be skeptical of conservatives during the 1960s when a parish like All Saints, Brighton Heights, could host a white-flight school, [45] or when Father Joseph Wittkofski of Charleroi could publicly oppose a convention resolution condemning “Membership in Segregated Organizations.” For all that Wittkofski’s views were shaped by the ethnically segregated culture of the Mon Valley, the former Roman Catholic priest’s right-wing politics were anathema to many and prompted a dramatic walkout by the Holy Cross delegation at the diocesan convention of 1969. [46]

There was, however, another side to this picture, the first steps having been taken by Walter Righter in the early 1950s, when he accepted an African American couple into his parish in Aliquippa, despite the fact that the town was organized as a series of ethnically segregated communities (known as “plans”). There were black churches in Plan Nine, a vestryman told Righter, to which his rector responded that none of them were an Episcopal church. “Well Reverend,” the vestryman answered, “you’ve got yourself a problem,” but Righter insisted on accepting Garfield Shaw and his wife and lost only one family as a result. [47] Yet such ventures were not limited to Righter. In 1964, comfortable St. Stephen’s, Sewickley, accepted Richard Martin as a domestic missionary-in-training and invited him to conduct work in Pittsburgh’s Hill district, which had lacked an Episcopal presence since Holy Cross had left the neighborhood in 1954. From Martin’s work with drug addicts developed an increasingly active Episcopal ministry to the African American community. During the summer of 1966, younger members of the parish helped coach their African American counterparts at the local YMCA, with six of the latter becoming the first African Americans to play in a junior tennis tournament in Pittsburgh. [48]

It is worth noting, I think, that concern for minority interests has persisted into recent times. In 1993, while Canon to the Ordinary, Robert Duncan was active in helping establish the diocesan commission on racism, which sought to encourage Episcopalians to undertake such tasks as mentoring, patronage of minority businesses and working to ensure equal access to housing. [49] As bishop, he continued to support the commission’s work and to draw attention to racial division in the Pittsburgh community. [50] In 1998, the commission on racism organized the first diocesan Absalom Jones Day celebration at Trinity Cathedral, which was distinguished by seminars on inequality and injustice, racism in the workplace and affirmative action in college admissions. [51] In 2000, commission member Wanda Guthrie went so far as to praise Duncan for his role in encouraging minority leadership. “I’m amazed at how far we’ve come with the help of the bishop to fill positions in the diocese,” she declared. [52]

“Scholars agree that Jesus founded a religion based on the claim of His own divinity,” Bishop Pardue wrote in 1947. “It is quite evident that you cannot accept Jesus as a great and good man while at the same time you reject Him as the Son of God. No great and good man could be merely that and make such preposterous claims.” [53] The following year, Pardue criticized what might be termed the distinctively American problem of constructing one’s faith for oneself:

Modern destructive liberalism has contributed much toward this individualistic attitude concerning things that belong to God. The debunking of faith, the Bible, the Prayer Book, the Creeds, theology, the Sacraments, and the Church, have all made us more and more disrespectful toward the eternal verities and therefore we have created inadequate little philosophical codes of transitory values which we claim to be ‘a religion of my own.’ [54]

And there’s the rub. At times, are we not all guilty of such a charge? We can look to so many efforts within this diocese to move beyond selfish individualism. To Nancy Chalfant and the Verland Foundation; to Richard Davies and the pre-school for handicapped children at St. Peter’s, Brentwood; to Sam Shoemaker and the Pittsburgh Experiment; to Becky Spanos and Anglicans for Life (formerly the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life); to David Else and the Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse; to Lynn Edwards and the Shepherd Wellness Center for AIDS sufferers; to Whis Hays and Rock the World Youth Alliance. Pittsburgh’s Episcopalians have set out to change the culture over the past half-century, not conform to it.

Amidst all this innovation, however, a parting of ways has become ever more apparent between confessing Anglicans (of all theological stripes) and their Episcopal counterparts. It came as no surprise to me last night to hear Joan Gundersen confess that no parish from District One had expressed interest in remaining part of the enduring Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. The Beaver Valley, secured long ago by John Guest and his successors, is solid for realignment. It is still ironic to recall that in March 1991, it was Bishop Alden Hathaway who was expressing doubts about “the absence of ecclesiastic theology and [lack of] conformity with Anglicanism,” [55] at Orchard Hill Church, (planted by St. Stephen’s, Sewickley, in 1987) and yet nine months later Episcopal Life could feature it as an example of successful church planting. Within days, Orchard Hill’s leaders had announced their departure from the denomination, the first but by no means the last to do so. [56] We can debate the merits of their decision, yet the central fact remains that the shift in theological perspective has occurred at both ends of the spectrum. If Bishop Pardue – hardly a raving fundamentalist – was aware of it in the 1950s, it is pointless to argue a case of overreaction half a century on.

Early in this address I stated the undesirability of a historian predicting the future. Now I choose to exercise the speaker’s privilege. As we enter the twilight world of multiple standing committees and mutual disavowal of the legal standing of each side’s authorities, I confess I am close to despair. One thing I will declare: a protracted war waged for control of assets, while unlikely to destroy communities in Sewickley or Moon Township, in East Liberty and Mt Lebanon, could spell the death knell of all too many small parishes, from Kittanning to Crafton and from Monongahela to Mt Washington. Where, I find myself wondering, is the spirit that will seek first the preservation of a Christian community no matter what its affiliation? I can imagine the question at the Last Judgment: “How did you vote on realignment?” and the immediate follow-up (regardless of the answer): “Following that decision, what did you then do to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ?” What I cannot imagine is the question: “Whom did you sue (or against what suits did you defend) in order to preserve your property?” If this is an overly simplistic way of putting it, well . . . there’s a lot of that about these days.

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books,according to their works. [57]

God grant that when that day comes we may all be found worthy of the task to which we have been called.

In closing, let me invoke one whose voice still speaks to us beyond the pejoratives and the pettiness of today, to the very heart of self-denying love – to Nancy Chalfant at that moment when her God and ours revealed that in her care for her handicapped daughter she was permitted to testify to the fullness of divine revelation and redemption:

I knew it must be God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit . . . Oh, what hope I was filled with then! God’s power was real, and I was actually feeling it as it burned in my heart. I knew that he loved me and Verlinda and wanted her to be whole and well. I saw that I could be a channel through which that power could work, and I didn’t have to sit by helplessly as Verlinda grew in years but not in mentality. Jesus became real to me, no longer a shadowy figure living 2,000 years ago but a person to love and be loved now, today, a person who loved Verlinda, too, and who hurt when we hurt. [58]

If Pittsburgh’s Anglicans and Episcopalians seek a new post-realignment paradigm for relationship, they could hardly do better.

NOTES

[1] Convention Journal of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, May 10, 1955, 22.

[2] Deuteronomy 34: 1-4.

[3] http://www.churchworthfinding.org/Confessions.html

[4] See the discussion in Robert W. Prichard, “The Place of Doctrine in the Episcopal Church,” in Ephraim Radner and George R. Sumner, eds., Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 13-45.

[5] Psalms 55:14

[6] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 193.

[7] Rt. Revd. Robert Duncan, “Anglicanism Come of Age: A Post-Colonial and Global Communion for the 21st Century,” The Global Anglican Future Conference, June 18, 2008, 2, accessed on July 9, 2008 at http://www.acn-us.org/etc/2008/anglicanism-come-of-age.pdf

[8]Convention Journal, 24 May 1966, 38.

[9] Trinity, June 1992.

[10] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, October 1973, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (hereafter EDP).

[11] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, November, 1973, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[12] Revd. Dr. Harold Lewis and Florence Atwood to Rt. Revd. Katharine Jefferts Schori, February 28, 2007, accessed July 9, 2008 at http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=18365

[13] Duncan, “Anglicanism Come of Age,” 4.

[14] See Miranda K. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

[15] Duncan, “Anglicanism Come of Age,” 4.

[16] Revd. Joseph Doddridge to Bp. John H. Hobart, December 1816, in Revd. Joseph Doddridge, Memoirs, Letter and Papers: Establishment of the Church in Western Pennsylvania (n.d.).

[17] Convention Journal, June 9-10, 1875, 51.

[18] Convention Journal, June 8-9, 1887, 68-69.

[19] O. Smalley to Rt. Revd. Alexander Mann, June 7, 1937, Nancy K. Pushee to Rt. Revd. Alexander Mann, May 16, 1937, RG2/3.1, Box 6BP, EDP.

[20] Convention Journal, January 28-29, 1941, 14.

[21] Rt. Revd. Dr. John Kerfoot to Revd. Dr. Dix, November 1872, quoted in Hall Harrison, Life of the Right Reverend John Barrett Kerfoot, First Bishop of Pittsburgh Vol. 2 (New York: James Pott and Co., 1886), 493-494.

[22] Revd. George Rogers, “Recollections of the Church in Pittsburgh Thirty Years Ago,” 15, June 15, 1915, RG5/1.1, Box 1DP, EDP.

[23] Convention Journal, June 11-12, 1890, 30, 38-42, 45-46; Rogers, “Recollections of the Church in Pittsburgh,” 8-9.

[24] See Brooke Foss Wescott, Social Aspects of Christianity. (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1887).

[25] William R. Huntington, The Church-Idea: An Essay Toward Unity. (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1870).

[26] Hill Burgwin to Editor of Church Standard, April 16, 1898, RG2/2.2, Box 3BP, EDP.

[27] Church News, April 1903.

[28] Church News, October 1899.

[29] Church News, March 1908.

[30] Rt. Revd. Alexander Mann, “Sermon Preached at the Consecration of TrinityChurch, Geneva, NY,” Memorial Day, 1933, RG2/3.1, Box 6BP, EDP.

[31] Board of Examining Chaplains Minutes, March 3, 1982, RG4A/2.1:2, Box 2DC, EDP.

[32] Episcopal Life, October 5, 2008, at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81847_ENG_HTM.htm

[33] Church News, January 1923.

[34] Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 11, 2004; PEPtalk, May-June 2004.

[35] E. J. Edsall, Three Generations: A History of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1855-1942. (Unpublished manuscript, 1942), 142.

[36] Diocesan Council – District X Minutes, September 21, 1987, RG4A/2.1:1, Box 1DC, EDP.

[37] Trinity, November 1996.

[38] Convention Journal, May 11, 1954, 41.

[39] Church News, May 1957.

[40] Church News, May 1954.

[41] Walter Righter interviewed by Jeremy Bonner, July 18, 2006, Tape A.

[42] Church News, May 1949.

[43] Helen S. Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door: The Life of Sam Shoemaker. (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 130-32.

[44] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, May 1968, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[45] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, August 1967, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[46] Convention Journal, May 13, 1969, 16, 34; Church News, June 1969.

[47] Righter interview, July 18, 2006, Tape A.

[48] Church News, June 1965; Christian Social Relations Bulletin, November 1966, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[49] Trinity, December 1993/January 1994.

[50] Trinity, December 1996/January 1997.

[51] Trinity, March 1998.

[52] Trinity, October 2000.

[53] Church News, December 1947.

[54] Church News, January 1948.

[55] Standing Committee Minutes, March 18, 1991, RG4A/1.8, Box 10DRB, EDP.

[56] Standing Committee Minutes, December 15-16, 1991, RG4A/1.8, Box 10DRB, EDP; Trinity, February 1992.

[57] Revelation 20:11-12

[58] D. Chalfant, Child of Grace: A Mother’s Life Changed by a Daughter’s Special Needs. (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1988), 30.

Across the Aisle meets at Trinity Cathedral

This evening I attended an Across the Aisle meeting hosted by our parish and came away with a more positive impression than I anticipated.

First, the tone was civil. Jim Simons opened proceedings with an expression of hope that all present could agree on a common understanding of Jesus Christ and his salvific work and noted that the national church had expressed a desire for reorganization in as autonomous a fashion as possible. He outlined the manner in which he was informed of his removal from the original Standing Committee (by phone and without opportunity to discuss the matter with his former colleagues) and cited Title 1, Canon 1.2.4 (a) as the authority for the Presiding Bishop to recognize the new Standing Committee. He noted that the search for an acting bishop is under way and that a sitting bishop has been invited to assist the search committee in the weeks ahead. He also noted that there had been many messages of support and that he was receiving upwards of 100 e-mails every day.

Lou Hays from St. Paul's, Mt Lebanon, discussed parochial issues, being careful to stress that 'only individuals can leave the Episcopal Church.' He noted that parishes need do nothing to remain in the Episcopal Church, but that a vestry could confirm that it was remaining by resolution and by sending their assessment to the Episcopal Diocese (the Southern Cone Diocese was, throughout these proceedings, referred to as "the Oliver Building"). Those parishes still in discernment he urged to take time over their decision. Small dissenting groups might form house churches; larger groups should aim to reorganize; if the vestry seeks to realign but the congregation is generally opposed (is there any such situation in Pittsburgh?) then people should stay and "fight for your parish and your rights." If a parish was on the episcopal visitation schedule and the bishop turned up unannounced (Bishop Henry sitting next to me raised his eyebrows at that) one should invite him to worship but not allow him to preside, though if he did it "wouldn't be a fatal indicator" of realignment.

I asked Jim Simons where the Standing Committee saw the relationship between the realigning and the remaining some months down the road. He was noncommittal, but praised the Cathedral resolution as a model that might serve as a way forward and I believe he was being genuine when he said it.

Someone from St. Alban's, Murrysville, asked if a remnant from a realigned parish would be allowed to send delegates to the Episcopal convention, to which the answer was yes. A question about parochial endowment monies held by the Southern Cone Diocese led Jim to remark that parishes were free to ask for such monies to be returned to them and that he didn't anticipate that such requests would be ignored. "That doesn't sound like the character of folks there," he added.

Jim went on to note: "Your pastoral needs and your spiritual needs take precedence over every other issue;" and introduced Scott Quinn as the priest responsible for assisting parishes trying to rebuild their devotional life.

Joan Gundersen reported on the special convention planned for December 13. All parishes are to be asked if they're sending delegates and the main business of the day will be electing new officers (letters are to be sent to members of diocesan bodies other than the Standing Committee asking them where they stand on realignment). There will also be district elections (interestingly, no District One parish has expressed interest in remaining with the Episcopal Diocese - John Guest won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Beaver Valley years ago). It is possible that there will be an ordination at the closing Eucharist.

One attendee expressed frustration that the mailing list for the Trinity newsletter had been denied to the Episcopal Diocese (that was a bad decision on the Southern Cone's part, say I). Another person asked why they couldn't share properties with the other side. "Do the Southern Cone hate us so much," she asked, "that they don't want to share?" To me, this is a glimmer of hope that there are those on both sides looking for a way forward and I suspect there are many parishes that would welcome that option. Jim Simons agreed that that might well be the way to resolve some of the hurt down the road.

One final piece of interesting news. The Presiding Bishop will be at Calvary Church on All Saints Sunday!

To the Grey Havens: Diocese of Pittsburgh Convention, October 4, 2008

Then Elrond and Galadriel rode on; for the Third Age was over, and the Days of the Rings were past, and an end was come of the story and song of those times . . . And when they had passed from the Shire, going about the south skirts of the White Downs, they came to the Far Downs, and to the Towers, and looked on the distant Sea; and so they rode down at last to Mithlond, to the Grey Havens in the long firth of Lune. As they came to the gates Cirdan the Shipwright came forth to greet them. Very tall he was, and his beard was long, and he was grey and old, save that his eyes were keen as stars; and he looked at them and bowed, and said: ‘All is now ready.’ Then Cirdan led them to the Havens, and there was a white ship lying, and upon the quay stood a figure robed all in white awaiting them. As he turned and came towards them Frodo saw that it was Gandalf; and on his hand he wore the Third Ring, Narya the Great, and the stone upon it was red as fire. Then those who were to go were glad, for they knew that Gandalf also would take ship with them. But Sam was now sorrowful at heart, and it seemed to him that if the parting would be bitter, more grievous still would be the long road home alone . . . and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the waters that was soon lost in the West. There still he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle Earth and the sound of them sank into his heart.

And so, without great fanfare, the greater part of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh passes to the Southern Cone, almost exactly five years after its leaders first proclaimed at St. Martin’s, Monroeville, their intention to uphold historic Christian teaching and practice, whatever the Episcopal Church might choose to do. Once again assembled in St. Martin’s, the church where George Stockhowe presided over Pittsburgh’s Episcopal charismatic renewal, deputies affirmed a decision to realign with the Province of the Southern Cone. In the clergy order the vote was 121-33 (with three abstentions and two invalid votes) and in the lay order 119-69 (with three abstentions). The vote in favor was 76.1 percent in the clergy order (compared to 81.9 percent in 2007) and 62.3 percent in the lay order (compared to 66.7 percent in 2007). There were twenty-six more clergy delegates and fourteen more lay delegates present this year.

There were moments both of drama and pure entertainment. The sight of assisting (not Assistant, as he made clear) Bishop Henry Scriven ringing a large hand bell to summon dilatory delegates to their places should live long in the memory. Likewise, Canon Missioner Mary Hays’ description of herself as a “Pittsburgh babe,” by which she intended merely to reference herself as a comparative newcomer, evoked a storm of merriment. And perhaps equally sobering, in the immediate aftermath of the vote, Father Jim Simons of St. Michael’s, Ligonier, rising to ask that his opposition be recorded in the minutes (rejected by the presiding officer as running contrary to the earlier convention decision not to hold a recorded vote) and the somewhat ponderous announcement of Dr. Harold Lewis of Calvary that, in light of the realignment vote, his delegation could no longer be part of proceedings, a statement which, I fear, did not evoke quite the sentiments from the rest of the assembly that he might have wished.

Convention convened at 8:30 AM, with Standing Committee president David Wilson in the chair. After an invocation from Canon Hays, Wilson announced that the practice in the absence of the bishop is to appoint a presbyter to preside and Jonathan Millard of Church of the Ascension, Oakland, was appointed without objection, Wilson happily handing over a copy of Roberts’ Rules of Order for Dummies. Father Millard welcomed a certain representative of the Province of the Southern Cone, permitted on the floor by virtue of a provision whereby clergy from churches in communion with the Episcopal Church may be present with voice but no vote. Thunderous applause followed.

A quorum was reported to be present. After the presiding officer ruled out of order a motion that the credentials of lay deputies pledged to realign be regarded as invalid, discussion moved to the question of the admission of four new church plants – Seeds of Hope, Bloomfield; Charis 247, Coraopolis; Grace Anglican Fellowship, Slippery Rock; and Somerset Anglican Fellowship, Somerset. Procedural debates held up proceedings for a while as St. Francis-in-the-Fields, Somerset, from which Somerset Anglican Fellowship had been carved to accommodate more fervent advocates of realignment, objected to the Diocesan Council’s proposal to give each entity two delegates (when the old parish would have been entitled to three). Father Millard ruled that St. Francis be given its full complement, based on its original parochial report. Following this, Father Charles Martin, a hoary old parliamentarian of conventions past, rose to question whether it was appropriate to admit four new congregations to membership whose first act would be to vote themselves out of the Episcopal Church. As I understood it, his point had less to do with the appropriateness or otherwise of realignment than with whether it was proper to admit them now (rather than after the realignment vote). A cynic might be tempted to ask whether these plants were admitted at this time at least in part to bolster the “aye” vote. All the new parishes were admitted.

As was the case a year ago, convention approved use of a paper ballot that would provide a record of the vote without subjecting individuals to undue pressure (as a historian I rather regret this as it would be interesting to have the record of names to compare with the listing from the 2003 convention, but there you are). There followed a short discussion of the minutes from last year’s convention, where it was asserted that the chancellor did not make public a ruling that a list of those opposing realignment permitted by Bishop Duncan would not be printed in the minutes. There being no verifiable proof (only differing memories of that day), the convention retained the original language.

Convention Eucharist was scheduled before the realignment vote (a smart move to ensure one last Communion as one church). David Wilson was preacher and once again demonstrated that David Wilson of the blogosphere and David Wilson, the pastor, are two very different creatures. Preaching on the text, “Take Courage; It is I; Don’t be Afraid,” he offered a moving retrospective on his years of service as a laymen in three parishes, as a priest in three, and on more committees than he could remember. “There is no other diocese I have desired to be a part of,” he told the delegates. In coming to Christ, he had been able to look back and see the hopeless, sinful, self-centered, self-directed individual that he had hitherto been. Yet doing what has to be done takes courage. “The safe place is always in the boat,” not trying to walk on the water. What God called realigners and reorganizers to do took courage, but He still wants us to be risk-takers. Such risk-taking should not prevent us from drawing from the strength even of those who are diametrically opposed to us. “We may be opponents today,” he added, “but can we be worthy opponents?” Ultimately, whatever the vote, there was nothing to fear because God is with us and He would see us through the present difficulty. “Can we,” he asked in words that are strangely absent from much of the discourse at present, “bless each other as we separate?”

Convention then adjourned for district meetings with the declared intent to reconvene at 11:40 AM. In the visitors gallery I saw one Bill Eaton in a clerical collar and identified by his badge as AMIA, while in the corridor I encountered John Guest, still following diocesan conventions forty years after he first arrived in Pittsburgh.

Bishop Henry was heard to cry “I’m hungry, I want my lunch!” and delegates filed back to complete the process. After a procedural amendment regarding lay membership on the Board of Trustees, we turned to the composite amendment changing Articles 1, 12 and 13 of the Constitution. Joan Gundersen moved that since this conflicted with a “higher order rule” (the Constitution of the Episcopal Church) we should not proceed, but the presiding officer accepted legal advice that this part of Roberts’ Rules did not apply to questions of disaffiliation.

There followed twenty minutes of valuable testimony. Deacon Becky Spanos’s reminder to everyone present of the Episcopal Church’s neglect of the culture of life was a welcome reminder of the burden that so many within the renewal movement have had to bear, yet the testimony of Kris Opat (of the Three Nails plant), a TESM student and protégé of Whis Hays, that he could not support realignment demonstrates how many people are torn. From All Saints, Leechburg, a cry of pain for the “undefined Christianity” of recent years, was measured against a warning from Christ Church, North Hills, that withdrawal will leave the Episcopal Church even less accountable than it is today. From Battle Brown of Seeds of Hope the word that “Today is a Sad and Glorious Day,” to the pledge of Father Jay Geisler of St. Stephen’s, McKeesport, that he will not sever friendships after realignment. And my personal favorite (a fellow Brit), Father Philip Wainwright of St. Peter’s, Brentwood, affirming that many of the national church leadership are among the lost but that we are sent to call the lost to repentance. Many in Pittsburgh’s diocesan leadership have tried time and again to get them to see, Father Wainwright admitted, and he blames no one who feels they can do no more, but if anyone was in any doubt then perhaps God was still calling them to stay and fight. A motion to continue debate was defeated; clearly most delegates had had enough.

At 12:15 PM balloting began. While waiting for the result, delegates approved a provisional budget and parochial assessments, being warned that various parishes (on both sides) had indicated that they would cease to pay assessments starting tomorrow, depending upon the outcome of the vote. Responsibility for adjusting the budget was handed to Diocesan Council with instructions to report back to delegates in writing in six months time. Bishop Henry (soon to depart for England for a job with SAMS) reported on his experiences of the ongoing life of the diocese. Parishes, he said are getting on with mission. At a recent visitation to St, Philip’s, Moon Township, he confirmed 54 teenagers and young adults! We are still in relationship with one another, despite everything. Canon Hays praised the way that everything had been done in the past few years with “grace and generosity,” and expressed her anticipation for the future. She noted her particular gratitude to her mentor, the newest bishop of the Southern Cone.

At 12:58 PM, the result was announced, followed in succession by Father Simons’ objection and the departure of the Calvary delegation. As voting got under way on the clauses acceding to the Southern Cone, a message was read aloud from Archbishop Gregory Venables welcoming the Diocese of Pittsburgh to their new province. Following adjournment, delegates were asked to wait while the Standing Committee held a hurried conference. When they emerged at 1:16 PM, it was to announce that a special convention on November 7-8 will elect a “new” bishop. In the interim, Archbishop Venables has appointed Robert Duncan as episcopal commissary for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. To rapturous applause our new commissary took the lectern to declare: “It’s my joy to once again give episcopal leadership.”

And so here we are, whether like Frodo to sail into the west or like Sam to stand upon the shore and listen to the sigh and murmur of the waves. And truly an end has come to the story and song of these times.

Thomas Elton Brown reflects on The Road to Renewal

Dr. Brown wrote the pioneering study Bible Belt Catholicism: A History of the Roman Catholic Church in Oklahoma, 1905-1945. He was kind enough to permit me to share his personal impressions of my biography of Victor Reed.

I was raised a Catholic in Oklahoma during Victor Reed’s episcopacy. My family was a member of Christ the King parish in Oklahoma City while the then Monsignor Buswell was pastor and the then Father James Halpine was the assistant pastor. Long before Mother Denise was removed from her position as the head of the convent in Tulsa, she taught me second grade at Christ the King elementary school. And I graduated from McGuinness High School in 1964. So much of your monograph was a narrative of my youth. Since I attended McGuinness from 1960 to 1964, you can figure out the events I remembered and the participants I personally knew. It was a first for me as a trained historian to read a scholarly study that both was a narrative in which I would be a primary source and was an analysis about which I had produced a secondary source. I was somewhat schizophrentic in my reading. I would be checking footnotes to identify sources and mulling over the conclusions of each chapter in light of the narrative. Only then I would swing to my personal recollections – “Oh yes, I remember that.” Or “Wow, I didn’t know that.” Or “Oh no, that’s not how it happened” [Or at least, “That’s not how I remember it.”]

In sum, then, I just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it – both as an historian of the subject and as a reader with a personal involvement. As I initially wrote, I found it to be well researched and well written – both in a flowing writing style and a readily understandable structure. I thought you did an admirable job of placing Oklahoma within the broader context of the changes occurring simultaneously in other parts of the country. Some reviewers will often conclude a laudatory review by stating the monograph is a model for future studies or breaks new historiographical ground. Being so close personally to the topic and being so far away from active historical scholarship, I am not in position to make such a statement. But I can confidently state that it is as outstanding biography that captured a personality that truly wrestled with a range of issues as he struggled to do the right thing.

The Duncan Deposition

Teaching has kept me from posting over the past month yet it would be remiss to pass over this day without noting the news from Salt Lake City. It would seem that the House of Bishops has now taken its stand by not waiting for the diocesan vote on realignment. Looking back on +Bob Duncan's period in office (13 years and counting), it's interesting to reflect how the persona of a secessionist has been projected on the Bishop of Pittsburgh by his critics back before his consecration. The historical record (of recorded statements at least) does not reflect that. While it's always easy to think how things might have been managed "better" had "we" had the handling of them, it's hard to see a way it could have been avoided. It was always too little and too late. As J. Gresham Machen concluded almost a century ago, Liberal Christianity and its Traditional (Conservative) rival will ultimately come to a parting of the ways. It may be amicable or bloody but in the end it will come. What is important is how one handles the fragments.

For the orthodox (especially the ardent proponents of realignment) this is but an incident on the road to a brighter future; it merely confirms their view of the majority of members of the House of Bishops. The damage done to institutional Anglicanism in America, I suspect, is mortal. According to David Virtue, dissenters at the meeting included the bishops of East Tennessee, Easton, Milwaukee, Montana, New Jersey, Northwest Texas,Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Virginia, none of them known for their conservatism. Perhaps they suspect the reckoning that must follow.

And so the legacy of the Episcopal Church passes into history. May the new future be all that its proponents believe it to be. I would that I had their confidence and yet at present I feel nothing so much as a sense of a fading vision. What awaits us beyond October 4 for me still has most uncertain contours.

For the Virtue report, see: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9024

And here's a downloadable spreadsheet indicating how the bishops voted, courtesy of TitusOneNine: http://kendallharmon.net/t19/media/Duncan_Deposition_Vote.xls

Paris is Worth a Mass?

Over the weekend, I had occasion to turn to one of the great English historical classics, George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England, published in 1935. The following passage immediately caught my eye.

Liberalism in its Victorian plenitude had been an easy burden to bear, for it contained - and who could doubt it? - a various and valuable collection of gold, stocks, bibles, progressive thoughts, and decent inhibitions. It was solid and sensible and just a little mysterious; and though one could not exactly gambol with such a weight on one's shoulders, it permitted one to walk in a dignified manner and even to execute from time to time those eccentric little steps which are so necessary to the health of Englishmen . . . . But somehow or other, as the century turned, the burden of Liberalism grew more and more irksome; it began to give out a dismal, rattling sound; it was just as if some unfortunate miracle had been performed upon its contents, turning them into nothing more than bits of old iron fragments of intimate crockery, and other relics of a domestic past. What could the matter be? Liberalism was still embodied in a large political party; it enjoyed the support of philosophy and religion; it was intelligible, it was intelligent, and it was English. But it was also slow; and it so far transcended politics and economics as to impose itself upon behavior as well. For a nation which wanted to revive a sluggish blood by running very fast and in any direction, Liberalism was clearly an inconvenient burden. (pp.7-8)

No prizes for any analogy that might be drawn with the just-concluded Lambeth Conference. The reported optimism of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the conclusion of the conference embodies so much of the eerie twilight that characterized those last days of Edwardian complacency that ended with a gunshot at Sarajevo. Yet Dangerfield's thesis is pertinent to our present condition, for he held that the disintegration of Liberal England had preceded the outbreak of the First World War. "The question is," Lord Selborn told his fellow peers as they debated the Liberal-sponsored Parliament Act of 1911 which would strip them of their power indefinitely to veto legislation passed in the Commons, "shall we perish in the dark, slain by our own hand, or in the light, killed by our enemies?" (64)

A similar question hung over Lambeth 2008. Behind all the worthy language of building relationship and understanding cultural context, lurked the spectre of division and subdivision. Critics of the meeting predicted even before it began that it was so structured as to fail to express any view that might be regarded as definitive; so far, they seem to have been proved right.

To my mind, this is not something that can be blamed solely on the Archbishop of Canterbury. Unquestionably, the choice of an indaba structure was guaranteed to produce an outcome very different from that of Lambeth 1998, yet it was open to those conservatives who went to Lambeth to decline to participate in such activity with any bishop who refused to disavow the recent innovations in theological teaching and practice, as defined by the Windsor Report. With the boycott by most GAFCON participants, the only bishops to whom this would have applied would have been certain representatives of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Yet - the statement from the Sudanese bishops apart - no such declaration was made.

By the same token, I now find it increasingly difficult to view Rowan Williams with quite the same level of equanimity as heretofore. While I agree that the covenant process cannot and should not be rushed and I accept as valid his argument that his powers beyond the Church of England are seriously constrained, if he believes that the traditionalist point of view is a valid expression of Anglicanism there are many ways in which his moral authority could have been exercised to provide temporary shelter for those in the minority, in liberal and conservative provinces, if necessary. In North America, the threat of recognition of the CANA and AMIA bishops would probably have been enough to elicit compliance with Dar-es-Salaam. Archbishop Rowan spoke at great length in his presidential addresses about the need to build trust. When things have reached the state that we currently endure, building trust involves giving the minority the minimum they feel they need, even if it seems excessive.

In 1911 the House of Lords died in the dark; within a decade their Liberal foes had faded from the scene and the Lords endured with a power of temporary veto. In 2008 it would appear that the Anglican Communion is resolved to die in the light.

A Hymn For Lambeth 2008?

If Samuel Stone was good enough for 1867, he's good enough 140 years later. And let's be clear about Verse Three. Every part of the Church - the orthodox included - have issues to address. Triumphing in our own strength could be as deadly as succumbing to heresy.

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood
He bought her
And for her life He died.

She is from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!

’Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters
Who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters,
Repose in Eden land.

O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee:
There, past the border mountains,
Where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains
Forever shall abide!

Samuel J. Stone (1839-1900)

First Peer Review

Professor Thomas W. Jodziewicz of the University of Dallas has been kind enough to offer some positive impressions of my first monograph. To learn more, read his review at:

http://www.catholichistory.net/Book%20Reviews/BonnerRoadRenewal.htm

Pittsburgh Convention Comes Early!

Diocesan Convention is now brought forward one month, with threatened deposition by the September meeting of the House of Bishops cited as "sufficient cause." On Saturday October 4 delegates will meet at St. Martin's, Monroeville (which also hosted the special convention back in 2003, where the process of disassociation began). It's going to be a bumpy ride.

See: http://www.pghanglican.org/Conventions/2008%20Pre-Convention%20Letter%20_October_.pdf

Tending the Sheep: Pittsburgh’s Episcopal Bishops

This is the second of three articles that will appear in TRINITY, the diocesan publication of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. They represent an overview of a manuscript history, which will be published by Wipf and Stock in 2009.

Part I http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com/2008/05/out-of-this-furnace-episcopal.html

“We had a very weary ride over, or rather through, very bad roads to Waynesburg,” wrote John Kerfoot (1865-1881), “where at long intervals some ministers of ours held services years ago. We held service and I preached in the Court House, where we had a large and reverent congregation. We were guests of a family once ours, in which . . . the Prayer Book, and the memories of the early Church home, hallowed and taught by it, still kept their hold. Time has been sadly lost in that south-western part of the Diocese.” The office of bishop of Pittsburgh has never been a sinecure. The primitive transport networks of the nineteenth century imposed a particular physical strain and prior to the division of the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1865 the western portion of the state received few episcopal visitations. Bishops can, however, be equally vulnerable to the distractions of external commitments. “It is painfully apparent to me,” Alden Hathaway (1980-1995) ruefully admitted in 1988, “that over the past few years I have lost control of my calendar and my appointments. It is driven by the needs and desires for my time of a great variety of good and worthy projects, but the result is that they control me rather than I having any intentional order and design to the stewardship of my time.”

Six of Pittsburgh’s seven bishops came to the office as outsiders, a pattern that owed much to a lay preference for a bishop without ties to local clergy. “Only two men in the Diocese, I was told,” Cortlandt Whitehead (1882-1922) sardonically commented years after his election, “had ever seen me – one a clergyman and one a layman – neither of whom voted for me – men of sense and fine discernment.” Perhaps the most brutal election – requiring no less than sixteen ballots – was that of 1922, which finally chose Alexander Mann (1923-1943), rector of Trinity Church, Boston. In 1980 another stormy convention witnessed a closed session in which Dean John Rodgers of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (who had been nominated from the floor) was interrogated by convention delegates angry that they lacked adequate background information. Thankfully the convention then took only five ballots to elect Alden Hathaway, a decision that would mark the beginning of a singular change in outlook for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Fifteen years later, Canon Robert Duncan would be elected as Hathaway’s successor only after his initial rejection by the nominations committee and nomination from the floor with the backing of a wide cross-section of members of the diocese, many of whom did not share his theological convictions.

In the course of 250 years, Pittsburgh’s Episcopal bishops have represented a wide cross-section of the various schools of churchmanship, from the stately Anglo-Catholicism of John Kerfoot to the Broad Church pragmatism of Alexander Mann and the Evangelical fervor of Alden Hathaway. Not all were cradle Anglicans. While Robert Duncan (1996- ) waxes lyrical about his Anglo-Catholic upbringing (“If it hadn’t been for that parish church,” he says today, “I think I would not only have emotionally died but I would have physically died”), John Kerfoot was baptized a Presbyterian, a fact that concerned him enough to request a conditional baptism before his ordination in 1840. By contrast, Robert Appleyard (1968-1979) was an ordained Methodist minister before joining the Episcopal Church during the Second World War, distinguished by being the only English-speaker in his sixty-member Confirmation class on the island of New Guinea.

Several of Pittsburgh’s bishops have enjoyed prominent national roles. John Kerfoot , who helped broker an agreement to readmit southern Episcopalians to the General Convention a year before his election, was active in the debates that consolidated the ascendancy of the high church party within the Episcopal Church, while Austin Pardue (1944-1967) served as chairman of the national church commission on industrial work during the 1950s. Many bishops have also understood their responsibility to preach to the wider world, prompting Cortlandt Whitehead to denounce the 1892 Geary Act limiting Chinese immigration, Austin Pardue to become the first Episcopal bishop to address a national convention of the United Steel Workers, Robert Appleyard to promote Project Equality as a part of the national campaign for civil rights and Alden Hathaway to protest abortion outside the Pittsburgh offices of Planned Parenthood.

Such episcopal activism has nevertheless always been grounded in a coherent worldview, something that many postwar bishops have been obliged to emphasize. Austin Pardue, a writer of popular theological treatises during the 1950s, was one of the first to warn of the dangers of an entirely personal faith. “The debunking of faith, the Bible, the Prayer Book, the Creeds, theology, the Sacraments, and the Church,” he wrote in 1948, “have all made us more and more disrespectful toward the eternal verities and therefore we have created inadequate little philosophical codes of transitory values which we claim to be ‘a religion of my own.’” Twenty years later, Robert Appleyard would be more concerned with a theology that united discipleship and action. “We can identify with those movements that have to do with good government, fair housing to all everywhere, equal rights and the highest standards of education for everyone,’ he explained in 1968, “We can pray for those whose lives have become so bitter, so empty, so disconsolate, that they are not able to get down on their knees and pray.” By the 1980s and 1990s, however, the concern of the bishops of Pittsburgh was with the need to defend catholic tradition and biblical authority. “I have often been in the thick of conflicts within the Episcopal Church,” Robert Duncan reflected in 2002. “I make no apologies for this. Guarding the Faith is central to a bishop’s ordination vows. But others understand the meaning of the same vows and the same Faith differently.”

The shifting character of ecumenical dialogue – a central concern of many church leaders, tells its own tale. Episcopalians need to understand “what the true Catholic position is,” Bishop Whitehead warned in 1897, “as opposed to Romanism and Papalism, and understanding also what true Protestantism is, against what we protest and for what reasons.” Over thirty years later, his successor was more optimistic. “[Our] influence is out of all proportion to our numbers,” Alexander Mann insisted in 1933, “and when the Episcopal Church speaks in her corporate capacity, no Christian Communion in the country commands more truly the attention of thoughtful men . . . We are told that our position is illogical, but after all what is it but the position of the family, where one son is an extreme radical and one is an ultra conservative, but where all the children are held together by the bond of a common loyalty, a common love and trust.”

The postwar world would witness further development of ecumenical principles. Austin Pardue promoted connections with the Orthodox and Polish National Catholic Churches and in 1963 issued a pastoral letter responding to Pope John XXIII’s invitation to worldwide unity that was invoked by no less a figure than the Catholic ecumenist Cardinal Augustin Bea. Robert Appleyard led his diocese into Christian Associates, an ecumenical grouping formed in the 1960s to bring together many of southwestern Pennsylvania’s Christians, while Alden Hathaway established a deeper relationship with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. In 1988, Hathaway and Catholic Bishop Donald Wuerl pioneered the Christian Leaders Fellowship. The following year Hathaway signed a concordat with the Southwestern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “By rooting [our discussions] in the context of the local working experience,” Hathaway explained, “the understanding and respect of the church’s beliefs would be increased and thereby the appreciation for the theological strengths of the various communions.”

Ultimately, however, it is as bishops in the Anglican Communion that Pittsburgh’s leaders have been judged and will continue to be judged. “These rapidly growing and multiplying Anglican Churches of ours, are too much one to live and work apart comfortably;” declared John Kerfoot in 1879, “and are too strong and spreading to work apart safely; and too brave and independent to fear each other in a blessed co-partnership under Christ, in their holy task of winning souls and building up the kingdom . . . [The Lambeth Conferences] keep the one Faith written out brightly in the old lines of catholic Truth; these old lines traced afresh in living colors, which the truthful and obedient shall hereafter see with thankful memories of our counsels, when we shall have gone where the Truth and its sunlight shall never grow dim.” Almost a century later, Austin Pardue predicted that the Anglican Congress of 1963 might be the beginning of a process by which the Anglican Communion might “begin to act as one Church and not as 18 separate and individual churches.” Today, as the world waits for the outcome of Lambeth 2008, it may be expedient to remember the purpose for which the episcopate was consecrated and to pray that the price of leadership for all affected may not be too severe.