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California Diocese To Leave Episcopal Church Over Gays

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By JORDAN ROBERTSON, The Associated Press

Published: December 9, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO - An Episcopal diocese in central California voted Saturday to split with the national denomination over disagreements about the role of gays and lesbians in the church.

Clergy and lay members of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin voted 173-22 at their convention to remove all references to the national church from the diocese's constitution, said the Rev. Van McCalister, a diocesan spokesman.

The Fresno-based congregation is the first full diocese to secede because of a conservative-liberal rift that began decades ago and is now focused on whether the Bible condemns gay relationships.

"We have leadership in the Episcopal Church that has drastically and radically changed directions," McCalister said. "They have pulled the rug out from under us. They've started teaching something very different, something very new and novel, and it's impossible for us to follow a leadership that has so drastically reinvented itself."

The diocese, in a later vote, accepted an invitation to join a conservative South American congregation of the Worldwide Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. member of the global Anglican Communion.

The decision is almost certain to spark a court fight over control of the diocese's multimillion-dollar real estate holdings and other assets.

The denomination's head warned Bishop John-David Schofield against secession.

"I do not intend to threaten you, only to urge you to reconsider and draw back from this trajectory," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, head of the U.S. denomination, wrote to Schofield last week.

Schofield responded that the Episcopal Church "has isolated itself from the overwhelming majority of Christendom and more specifically from the Anglican Communion by denying Biblical truth and walking apart from the historic Faith and Order."

The Fresno diocese has explored breaking ties with the American church since 2003, when Episcopalians consecrated the church's first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The resulting uproar in the world Anglican fellowship has moved the 77-million-member communion to the brink of schism.

San Joaquin is one of three Episcopal dioceses that will not ordain women. Last year, the Episcopal Church elected Jefferts Schori as its first female primate.

Christian advocates for accepting gay relationships, including Jefferts Schori, say they are guided by biblical teachings on social justice and tolerance. Schofield and other conservatives believe Scripture bars same-sex relationships.

After the vote, Jefferts Schori said the church was saddened by the action.

"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness," she said in a statement. "We wish them to know of our prayers for them and their journey. The Episcopal Church will continue in the Diocese of San Joaquin, albeit with new leadership."

Some worshippers fought to persuade the diocese to resolve its disputes without separating from the U.S. church.

"I'm very disappointed but not totally surprised," said Nancy Key, 59, a member of Holy Family Episcopal Church in Fresno and co-founder of Remain Episcopal, a group formed in 2003 to fight secession. She said it had 125 members and far more supporters.

"This has been threatening to split our diocese apart for a long time," she said. "We feel like what we want to do is follow Christ, who included all, and used all of us for his ministry. And that didn't happen today."

Diocese holdings include 48 church buildings and its Fresno headquarters, several mission-style buildings surrounded by olive, Chinese elm and cherry trees. Assets are worth millions, McCalister said.

About 55 conservative Episcopal parishes have split from the church in recent years, some affiliating with Anglican provinces overseas, national church statistics show. But courts have mostly ruled against them.

San Joaquin is one of four full dioceses - with Fort Worth, Texas; Quincy, Ill., and Pittsburgh - of 110 in the nation that has moved toward breaking with the U.S. church.

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