The heresy trial of Bishop Walter Righter by his colleagues is the nadir of the deterioration of the quality and stature bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States.
The most dramatic change in the Episcopal Church in the forty years since I graduated from General Theological Seminary in New York City and was ordained in 1956, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine also in New York, is the fall of the House Bishops. One can accuse me of a nostalgic yearning for the good old days. I have never believed in the old days being better. I do yearn for Bishops who lead the church on ministry to the world. The house of Bishops has fallen.
I am a cradle Episcopalian. My father was a priest of the church so we had no romance about the office of Bishop. We knew them as sinful and broken human beings as well as elected leaders. As I grew up and went into the ministry Bishops were leaders not followers. Bishops led the church in liturgy, social service and social action. Paul Moore of New York dedicated his ministry to the urban church. He also led retreats for students at GTS. James Pike changed the liturgies of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York when he was dean. He did it again as Bishop, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. All the while he was a champion for civil rights for blacks. John Hines, Presiding Bishop in the 1960's, almost lost his life in the cause of the rights of black people in the South. George Barrett of Rochester worked with the Black community to hire community organizers à la Saul Alinsky to gain black rights in that city.
Horace Donegan of New York, Anson Stokes of Massachusetts, John Burt of Ohio, Kilmer Myers of California, John Krumm of Southern Ohio, Robert DeWitt of Pennsylvania, John Burgess of Massachusetts, Dan Corrigan of Colorado, Roger Blanchard also of Southern Ohio led the church in caring for the poor, disenfranchised and oppressed.
Bishops now are staunchly quiet, middle of the road, and harmless. They wield vicious power over the people in their immediate charge. People in the ordination process, seminarians and vicars feel the Bishop's heavy hand. There are a few activist Bishops on the conservative side of the bench. They oppose the ordination of women and openly homosexual persons. Rectors and lay people not under direct ecclesiastical control mostly ignore their Bishops. Even Bishop Browning, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, is an unknown to the people of the United States.
There are a few exceptions. Famous Bishop John Spong, of Newark, has written extensively on post-modern views of the Bible and human sexuality. Walter Righter's fame come from charges he is a heretic. They are our only nationally known Bishops. R. Stewart Wood and Coleman McGhee of Michigan both suffered arrest recently for sitting in and supporting the long strike against the Detroit Newspapers. Outspoken as priests, Suffragan Bishops Walter Dennis of New York and Barbara Harris of Massachusetts are muted now as they are second in command to Diocesan Bishops who run things. The present homophobic attacks on Righter are by Bishops concerned for the "church" rather than the world. They seldom are public in their stances.
Dioceses elect CEOS who are good administrators, pleasant chaps of both sexes, destined not to rock the boat. Where are the voices of the Bishops barking like prophets at the ravages of the Christian Right, the discrimination against immigrants, and the plundering of benefits for the poor, while corporate and military welfare abound?
When William Swing became Bishop of California in 1979 he led the Diocese in "The Dream of California" (popularly known as the wet dream of California). He asked the clergy and laity what they wanted to do, what were their priorities? Endless meetings, gazing at tea leaves and navels, filling out questionnaires resulted in the Dream. Social action and political involvement were way at the bottom of the list. "Spirituality," prayer, Bible study, Christian education came out on top. Our Bishop then went out and led the people in what they wanted to do. That is followership not leadership.
He told us he would not speak much in public and he would raise lots of money. He has kept his promise. Following James Pike and Kilmer Myers who spoke out often on public issues, Swing remains quiet on all of them. He raised two million for San Francisco's Episcopal Sanctuary for the homeless. Conscience salved, he then raised three million for the Episcopal conference center, the Bishop's Ranch, and twelve million for new steps and buildings at Grace Cathedral.
These latter millions are ministry to Episcopalians, not to the unchurched and disenfranchised. He has been good, but quiet, against capital Punishment and also about the issue of AIDS and toils on national committees raising money to fight that disease. But he has been silent on gay/lesbian rights. He opposes the blessing of same gender relationships. Bishop Pike in the nineteen sixties raised millions to complete Grace Cathedral and never ceased being an advocate of civil rights for all people.
I pick on Swing because I know this Diocese best. But his episcopate is characteristic of the rest of the church. Bishops are quiet, interested in social ministry not in social action. Social ministry is band-aid measures like feeding the hungry and collecting socks for the homeless. Social action means working to change conditions in church and society that oppress people, make them homeless and hungry. Bishops are interested in ministry to Episcopalians, they are not on mission to the world. Bishops have become ingrown, moralistic and judgmental. They show great concern over the sexual morality of the clergy and seminarians. Capital punishment, race and war are ignored.
The lack of leadership in the church is just another reason the dioceses are becoming more irrelevant. Diocesan staff people minister to Episcopalians. I ignore the diocese as much as I can. I operate in my parish and community. I would support Bishops who speak out and involve themselves in prophetic ministry. I ignore those who are silent.
I got a letter from a Bishop the other day saying we have to put sexuality behind us and get on to the real work of the church. Here is a Bishop who can't see ministry to the world. The real work of the church is sexuality. But bishops refuse to face it starkly and deeply. Sexuality is at the heart of the major issues that faced the church in the last four decades and before that. Birth control, divorce, abortion, pre-marital sex, venereal disease, AIDS, celibacy, marriage, homosexuality, ordination of women, inclusive language, clergy sexual misconduct are all issues rooted in human sexuality.
The deep fissure of racism is a sexual issue. Down in the heart of the American male is the myth that black people are enjoying physical and sensual sexual activity more than whites. My good friend Armand Kreft says, "We shrink from black sexuality because we know it is a result of economic injustice. We can buy our pleasures [resorts, new cars, new clothes] while [many] poor blacks have nothing but drugs and sex to ease their pain." The angry white males who still control the halls of the Bishops and Deputies of the Episcopal Church fear black sexuality. I believe that is why the Bishops of the Episcopal Church have never truly embraced the movement for black equality in our country. They have paid lip service to black rights and left it at that.
The church has diddled with resolutions, debates, and studies about these various sexual issues. The Episcopal Church without leadership from its Bishops remains essentially sex negative. The Bishops need to learn about sex, know about the varieties of sexual experience, and see films of human beings being sexual. They can get to know and understand their sexuality and that of the Episcopalians they are supposed to lead. They need to find ways to discuss their own sexual practices, pains, sorrows, joys and pleasures. Bishop Otis Charles served many years in the House of Bishops but never felt comfortable revealing his homosexuality to his Episcopal colleagues. He did so after he retired. Bishops talk a lot about being pastors to their clergy and people. They urge collegiality with one another. They don't have dialogue about their own sexuality. What they do instead is to make regulations about how they and other people should behave.
Most Bishops support rules about how clergy must not act toward parishioners. Shoved by insurance companies who have had to pay out big bucks for clerical misconduct, sex-nazi Bishops tell the clergy who, how, when, where and what to touch in parish life. Clergy are not to date parishioners without reporting their behavior to the Senior Warden. (Now that is a sure way to head off a relationship.) The parish church is off limits to non-married clergy who are seeking a mate.
Bishops paint their clergy with incredible power over lay people. Our authority is such that we can manipulate the poor laity into sexual behavior they don't really like. Poor dears. Our amazing power make the poor laity vulnerable to horrific abuse. Such power. Surely clergy have abused youngsters, men and women. Those clerics should be punished and rehabilitated. Bishops, afraid of insurance companies, have acquiesced in rules that deny the rights and liberties of the clergy.
But I notice the laity who seduce the clergy are not mentioned. There are no guidelines for the laity. Bishops seldom have rules for lay people. After all, they are the source of Bishop's income. The new rules will merely create a new hypocrisy. People who want to have sex with each other will find ways to do so in spite of the new rules and regulations.
In fairness I must say that the state of human sexuality in the church is no worse than the rest of American society. However, it is sad that the Bishops of the church do not lead the way in raising the sexual consciousness of the church and thus the nation.
Bishops today just love spirituality. Spirituality is the newest chic style in church life. San Francisco's Grace Cathedral has an expensive rug called a labyrinth. Religionists walk around in it so they can get spiritually high. Safe, non-controversial and quiet are values popular now in the church. In the General Theological Seminary Bookstore from 1953-1956 there was a tiny half shelf of books on spirituality. Now that section takes up six six-foot cases of bookshelves.
Robert McAfee Brown, the Presbyterian theologian, writes "spirituality" is the most dangerous word in the Christian vocabulary. He means that the emphasis prevalent in the church today on prayer, Bible study and developing one's spiritual life unhooks the Christian from the moral and action-oriented demands of the faith. Brown quotes Leonardo Boff, "Prayer is not the first thing that a person does. Before praying one experiences an existential shock." Now listen and read a word from Karl Barth, "To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."
Over the forty years I have been a priest I have seen the rise of spirituality in the church and the decline of social action and concern for the existential disorder of the church and society. So-called spirituality fells the House of Bishops.
No book I have ever read on spirituality fails to proclaim that the spiritual life calls us to action. They say we should go out into the world and serve the Lord. The trouble is none of those authors do it. Few of those spiritual types push the church and society cause change in the conditions that oppress the human beings on this planet.
Alan Jones, Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, is perhaps the most popular author and leader of workshops on spirituality in the Episcopal Church, if not the Anglican Communion. He is in demand to speak throughout the United States and Europe. Jones has never made a public written or verbal statement concerning the civil rights of gays and lesbians. He has not supported the movement for the church's blessing of same gender couples or the ordination of homosexuals. He is a member of three private clubs that discriminate against gays, women, Asians, blacks and most any minority group you might care to mention. He does not speak out on issues of farm labor, immigration or even the deplorable condition of California schools. He sent his children to private school, as of course, do many Episcopal clergy.
Bishop Swing belongs to private golf clubs notorious for racial, sexual and ethnic discrimination. All for spirituality, he never mentions the immorality of discrimination in private clubs or the many crises confronting the people of California.
Members of my parish deeply care about spirituality and are involved in retreats like Cursillo. Some went on to seminary and ordination. Some of most spiritual vestry persons, with others, forced the end of a feeding program at Trinity in the 1980's. They looked at administrative and personnel problems rather than the spiritual need to feed people. Some were afraid the church would get a bad name or drive people away if the homeless hung around the parish. People harped on the peripheral issues and ended the program. Few saw the program as integral to the parish ministry. I'll admit that today, a dozen years later, the focus is different and people are more welcoming to the homeless and hungry.
Bishop John-David Schofield of San Joaquin in central California is a leader in the spiritual renewal business. He renders retreats and spiritual workshops, and prays up a storm and discriminates against homosexuals. He is one of the Bishops to present Bishop Righter for heresy. His diocese is in the center of the farm belt of California. He has never spoken in defense of the exploited farm workers, legal and illegal aliens and their children. He is too busy chasing gays and lesbians and praying a lot.
The Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California churns out dozens of students for ordination every year. Many are gay and lesbian. Even they are silent and numbed with spirituality. Most of these graduates want jobs in the church. They will be the last to reveal their sexuality. They remain in the closet to get jobs in the church. Our bishops support that silence.
In 1964 four of us clergy were arrested in a sit-in in San Francisco. One seminary student, a lawyer, defended us for free in the court. Fined $500 for our activity, the students at CDSP took a collection and paid the penalty for us. That could not happen today. Spirituality numbs the conscience.
I pick on these California locals because I know of their behavior or lack of it. I see nothing about the rest of the church that makes me think things are different elsewhere.
The fall of the House of Bishops may come from one of the best thing that has happened in the church in the last forty years, i.e., greater lay participation in the church. The activity of the laity in the election of Bishops has been basically a good thing. In the old days a group of male cardinal rectors and leading, usually wealthy, lay men, met at cocktails and backed a candidate and presented that name to the convention for election. The first ballot elected these candidates. The former chancellor of the Diocese of Califonia told me that was how James Albert Pike was chosen and elected in the late 1950's. This method from time to time produced some of the great Bishops of the church. It also produced immeasurable mediocrity among most Bishops. Here was the real source of the country club bishops.
Now we have nominating committees with lay people on them to interview candidates. The nominees come to the diocese and campaign for the office. This affectionately is known as the dog and pony show. (I personally think that is a slap at dogs and ponies.) The mediocrities elected now at least represent the people's values and wishes. The poor quality of the Bishops is a direct consequence of this lay participation. Yet I truly believe the Holy Spirit is discernible more through the democratic process than when the back-room, cigar-smoking boys elected Bishops.
These days most folks interested in ordination focus on spirituality and serving local parishes. The emphasis is on prayer, Bible study and churchianity. There is little or no concern for institutional, social and political change. Those ordained in the last two or three decades emphasize serving the church rather than the world. One priest I know really means it when he says, "I want to minister to the rich. The poor and downtrodden don't interest me." Another priest told me that if it came to a choice between money for the church and letting Blacks move into his neighborhood, he'd vote for the money. These guys are more honest and outspoken than most of the clergy. The not so hidden agenda of most clergy is the desire to run nice institutional parish churches.
These are the attitudes in the pool of clergy who will someday become Bishops. But the ethics of Jesus focused on the inner meaning rather than the outward signs which are of little importance. The inner meaning has to do with love, compassion and forgiveness. The expression of that is ministry to the world. Today, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, relieving the distress of the widows and orphans, healing the sick, loving our neighbors working for justice and the advancement of the Kingdom are little more than empty phrases with which to tie up and end a sermonette in most parishes. Sadly, most clergy in the tube toward becoming Bishops accentuate peace, harmony and the bottom line.
The people who want to become Bishops must go through a Commission on Ministry. This group contains leading clergy and lay people in the local area. In the last twenty years countless men and women who felt the call to ordination have been turned down by Diocesan commissions on Ministry. They hear some lies or half truths about why they fail to advance to ordination. The commission cannot "discern" a calling to priesthood is usually the official reason given. Only God knows what "discern" means. The real reasons are the person is too old, too fat, gay, lesbian, divorced, single and having sex, too politically radical, disabled, too brash, too quiet, no charisma, not parish priest material, etc. If Bishops and the commissions ever told the truth, the real truth, about why prospects fail discernment, they would chance a suit for defamation of character.
The members of Commissions on Ministry are middle class Americans who like to serve on committees. They reflect the values of middle America rather than the ethics of Jesus. These good folks only allow safe, non-controversial people to get ordained. They will keep the church nice and clean. Jesus could not get through a Commission on ministry. Jesus could not get elected a Bishop. Sts. Peter and Paul would have to go back to work as fisherman and tent-maker. They were too controversial to be pastors or Bishops. The commissions reflect the cultural norm of the society. They are not interested in the radical message of Jesus.
The justices of the United States Supreme Court while appointed politically often rise to the majesty and prestige of the office. My hope is that the office of bishops itself raises the consciousness of those elected bishop to the highest biblical and historical expectations of the office. I expect the bishop to be a leader in liturgics, prophecy, scholarship and pastoral concern. The Bishops themselves will have to take matters into their own hands and move from being effective CEOs to become leaders in God's work in the world.
Robert Warren Cromey is
Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church
San Francisco, California