Displaced Episcopalians gather in New Hampshire

By Jesse J. DeConto

Seacoast Newspapers

EXETER, N.H. - About 100 displaced Episcopalians gathered for a Christmas Eve service at Phillips Exeter Academy this past week as an alternative to the mainline Episcopal churches that elected V. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican ChurchThis was the largest gathering of a group called the Seacoast Mission Fellowship (SMF), which is holding Bible studies in private homes and

providing community for Episcopalians who believe Scripture condemns

Robinson’s active relationship with his male partner of 14 years.

I’m just somebody looking for a new church, said Exeter resident and SMF member Clayton Ellis, a cradle Episcopalian who left his church of seven years, Christ Episcopal in Exeter, over Robinson’s election.

It is consoling to know I’m not alone.

Ellis was one of about 10 Christ Church members who left over Robinson election, according to Father John Denson, the church rector.

Exeter resident Charlie Higginson, who is considering leaving Christ Church after 17 years, said the number is closer to.

Were very sad when anybody feels the need to leave, Denson said. I would hope that we could stay together and talk through these things.

Ellis said he and other former Christ Church members have found a temporary home at All Saints Church in West Newbury, Mass., where they can agree practicing homosexuals should not hold leadership positions in the church.

In October, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leader of the Anglican churches worldwide, established a commission to examine the impact of creating a separate Anglican province in North America for dioceses and parishes who believe gay and lesbian sex acts violate Scripture. The commission will report on the potential for avoiding a split sometime in 04.

With the future of its relationship with the Episcopal Church yet uncertain, SMF has planned meetings only through January, when it will gather twice for Sunday worship and three times a week for Bible studies.

Leading the fellowship are two young seminarians from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an evangelical graduate school in South Hamilton,

Mass.

Christopher Klukas, 22, who delivered the Christmas Eve sermon Wednesday evening, and Esau McCauley, 24, who was visiting his sick mother in Alabama, a re organizing the temporarily homeless parishioners into home study classes which they also teach.

Klukas received a standing ovation when he announced he and McCauley a serving New Hampshire as missionaries of the Saint Aidan Mission Society. The men are handling the fellowship finances through All Saints in West Newbury until the group becomes more structured.

Our relationship with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion is still forming, McCauley told the Herald.

Helping Klukas to lead Wednesday service were his father, the Rev. Arnold Klukas, a professor at Nashotah House, an Episcopal seminary in Wisconsin, and Father Donald Wilson, the former priest-in-charge of Church of the Redeemer in Rochester, whom outgoing New Hampshire Bishop Douglas Theuner removed last month for insubordination when Wilson refused to acknowledge Robinson’s authority as bishop.

Several Redeemer parishioners attended Wednesday service, but afterward said they plan to remain in the Episcopal Church and hope Robinson will see fit to transfer their church into the care of the more conservative Diocese of Albany once he takes the bishop’s seat in March.

Our intention is to stay at our church and take it back, said church treasurer Kathy Lewis. We’re praying that Gene will be merciful and cut Redeemer loose to Albany. If he doesn’t, were going to be a thorn in his side until the day we die.

Another member, Susan Cloutman, said many at Redeemer are skipping the sacrament of communion and withholding money from the Diocese of N.H.

because appointed interim priests do not share their view of biblical authority.

Father Tim Rich, whose St. John Church in Portsmouth has lost about 10 members because of Robinson’s election, said the SMF will not last if it coalesces around a negative.

Your identity cant be sustained by opposition, he said. That’s not something that, in the long term, I believe can energize folks, can hold folks together, can create a sense of mission.

Rich said he prays SMF can organize around a positive identity. During the Christmas Eve service, no one mentioned Robinson, but Christopher Klukas did allude to the crisis in the Episcopal Church.

If nothing else, Christmas Eve is about God coming into the world to save sinners, he said. Regardless of anything that happens in our church, we are still Christians, and we are called to proclaim that Gospel.

Though he is confident Archbishop Williams will establish an orthodox province in North America and that the Seacoast Anglicans will join, McCauley stressed SMF did not form in protest of Robinson.

We’re not angry at anyone, he said. We’re not a church that’s in op position to anything. ... Were here strictly to provide a safe place.

Stratham resident Dave Ward, who left Christ Church in Exeter after four years, said the Episcopal Church in the United States split the Anglican Communion by endorsing Robinson, and those who gathered Wednesday are seeking to restore that communion.

The majority of Anglicans in the world are out of communion with the Diocese of New Hampshire, he said. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not going to side with a few political activists in New Hampshire.

Robinson was not available for comment, but diocesan clergy do not believe his ascendance to bishop must necessarily divide the church.

There are members of my parish who are not happy with the election of Bishop Robinson, but they have chosen to stay in the parish, said Father Hank Junkin, rector of St. Andrew’s n Hopkinton and president of the Standing Committee which advises the bishop. The bishop only comes to the parish once a year. You don’t need to be here when he here. All politics are local, and I think a healthy spiritual life is local too. From a day-to-day stand point, the bishop’s impact is very

minimal.

When asked whether a gay bishop could shepherd Christians who believe his lifestyle is sinful, Junkin responded Ita substantive and very good question to ask. I just wish we would be asking that question from inside the church rather than outside.

But SMF members no longer believe the Episcopal Church is providing the sound biblical teaching they expect. Higginson said Christ Church has two fine priests, but I think they’re misled. I think they’re deceived.

They have to do away with the scripture that holds the way that Robinson is living as sin, he said. In order to justify that, they’re going to have to change the way they teach scripture. What they’re doing is sanctifying the sin, and I can’t be part of that.

END