Conventional wisdom: Maryland Episcopalians Seek Ne Bishop

Last Easter, the Rt. Rev. Robert Ihloff celebrated his final Eucharist before retiring as 13th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

This Easter, Episcopalians are weighing who will succeed him.

Delegates will convene March 29 at St. James Church in Lafayette Square to vote by electronic ballot in an Electing Convention.

Five candidates from around the country are running, including a black man and two women -- a field that showcases the diversity the north Baltimore-based diocese seeks.

Initially, there were six candidates, but the Very Rev. Peter Eaton, rector and dean of St. John's Cathedral in Denver, withdrew last week, telling diocesan officials that he and his wife felt called to stay where they are.

 … Election issues in the diocese range from how to attract more youths and minorities to whether to sanction open communion, offering the sacrament of the Eucharist to people who aren't baptized Christians.

But the issues the Episcopal Church nationally and locally has wrestled with most publicly in recent years are whether to bless same-sex marriages and whether to approve openly gay or lesbian bishops.

Although there are no gay or lesbian candidates in this election, the diocese has been on the fault line of the national debate between liberals and conservatives over the 2003 consecration of a gay bishop in New Hampshire, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, as well as the appointment of women to high posts in the church.

Fallout in the Maryland diocese was evident as Ihloff, who was generally considered a unifying force, left with controversy raging in Baltimore County. There, 40 parishioners broke away from St. John's Church in Glyndon and formed their own church, the Church of the Resurrection, which is not a member of the diocese.

The breakaway parishioners said they were dissatisfied with what they considered revisionist interpretations of the Bible. Some claimed Ihloff tried to prevent them from holding services.

Agreeing to disagree

The message that diocesan officials and the candidates for bishop are giving to churchgoers is that whatever differences exist, members of the church should agree to disagree.

"There are people here who don't believe the same thing. That's a great thing about our Anglican religion," said the Rev. Stewart Lucas, associate rector of St. Margaret's Church in Annapolis and a member of a diocesan committee created to smooth the transition from Ihloff to his successor.

Robby Harris, a parishioner at All Hallows Church in southern Anne Arundel County, raised the issue of rifts during a pre-election "walkabout" for the candidates at Trinity Church in Towson on March 8.

"Given the tension that exists within the church and the breakaways that exist, what would be your counterargument to people who want to break away?" Harris asked one of the candidates, the Rev. John Hall.

"Be patient," answered Hall, rector of St. Matthew's Church in suburban Phoenix. "Anglicans traditionally have lived with ambiguity. It's important, when we get the big, hairy questions to take our time with the answers. Let's invite all people to the table and make sure they're all there."

Other candidates generally agreed in interviews last week.

"We are family," said the Rev. Canon Eugene Sutton of the Washington National Cathedral and director of its Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage. (A canon is a priest who serves on the staff of a cathedral and conducts worship and performs pastoral services, especially when the bishop is visiting other churches in the diocese.)

"Sometimes it gets heated and people storm out of the house," Sutton said. "But there's still a deep love there. No family agrees on every issue."

"Our unity has never demanded conformity," said the Rev. Jane Gould, rector of St. Stephen's Church in Lynn, Mass.

"We in the Episcopal Church have a diversity of opinion, and we pride ourselves on that," said the Rev. Lura Kaval, rector of the Church of St. Christopher in northern Anne Arundel County. "There is nothing in the Scripture that says we have to agree. It does say we have to love and honor one another. I don't think consensus is the be-all and the end-all."

A fifth candidate, the Rev. Canon Mark Gatza, was on sabbatical and could not be reached for comment. He is responsible for congregational development and clergy deployment for the Maryland diocese.

Honoring doctrine

Whatever their leanings on issues, the candidates appears to be for compromise -- but with an eye toward honoring doctrine and working to change at the national level doctrines with which they disagree.

Kaval, for example, said that if elected bishop she would be charged to uphold church doctrine and discipline.

"That is what I am called to do."

Because the Episcopal Church has no sanctioned liturgy for blessing same-sex marriages, she said, she would not sanction same-sex blessings in the diocese.

But, she said, she is upset that "we can bless pets, but we can't bless (gay and lesbian) people who love and respect each other."

Sutton also believes that playing politics is necessary on hot-button issues.

He, too, endorses blessing same-sex marriages.

"I am for the full inclusion of all God's children," said Sutton, the only black candidate. "The church has to find a way to bless committed, monogamous, loving relationships."

But he said he might, as bishop, give "wide latitude," rather than blanket approval, for blessings of same-sex couples, if only so as not to rock the boat.

"I don't want to get too far out in front of" public sentiment, he said.

Debate over communion

Some of the clearest distinctions among the candidates are on the issue of communion.

Kaval advocates blessing non-Christians during services -- but not giving them the sacrament of the Eucharist.

That aligns her with the contemporary Book of Common Prayer, the church's main liturgical handbook, but makes her a minority among the candidates, she said.

"If we say it's (receiving the Eucharist) open to everyone, it's not upholding the prayer book, and it doesn't allow people to begin a conversation on the meaning of the sacrament. It weakens our position as a denomination if we don't do things together."

Gould believes strongly in open communion, after working earlier in her career as Episcopal chaplain for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and trying to be as inclusive as possible to reach out to MIT students, many of whom came to the church with no religious background, searching for a sense of belonging.

"There's nothing in my reading of Scripture that suggests that Jesus ever required credentials" to receive the Eucharist, Gould said.

But she would not dictate the practice for all congregations as bishop because, she said, "the prayer book clearly prohibits the practice of open communion. It's not my practice to be consistently disobedient."

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