Church of the Word
TWICE DIVORCED BISHOP ELECT

Californian crisis but not in San Francisco
Number: 5819   Date: 11 May 2006

By George Conger

THE ANGLICAN Communion came one step closer to schism on May 6 following an election of a new bishop in California. The crisis came not in the much touted election in San Francisco, where the three partnered gay and lesbian priests lost to the suffragan Bishop of Alabama in the election for Bishop of California, but in the diocese of Northern California which elected a twice divorced and thrice married priest to be its next bishop.

.... The Rev Barry Beisner was elected on the fourth ballot in succession to the Rt Rev Jerry Lamb as Bishop of Northern California. Appointed Canon to the Ordinary [bishop’s assistant] to the Bishop of Northern California in 2002, Canon Beisner has been divorced twice and married three times. The election of Canon Beisner has caught American conservatives off guard. While primed to contest the possible election of a ‘gay’ bishop in California, conservatives contacted by The Church of England Newspaper were divided over a response to Beisner’s election.

Several conservative delegates to General Convention told The Church of England Newspaper they were troubled by Beisner’s election. To have opposed Gene Robinson’s election on moral and Scriptural grounds and not to oppose Beisner’s election would “reek of hypocrisy” one delegate said. While there have been over a dozen American bishops who have been divorced and remarried, Canon Beisner will be the first priest to have been divorced twice and married three times before being consecrated as bishop. In 1946 the Episcopal Church permitted divorcees to remarry in the Church upon special licence of their bishop. Clergy were generally not permitted to remarry after divorce and retain their orders until the 1960s.

The current rules for clergy remarriage after divorce varies by diocese across the Episcopal Church as no national church canon governs. The Beisner election has the potential for upsetting the political calculus worked out among the Episcopal Church’s fractious factions by the bishops to hold the Church together through Lambeth 2008. Conservatives and moderates pushing for acceptance of the recommendations of the Windsor Report may well fall out over the Beisner election.

This article comes from The Church of England Newspaper Online
http://www.churchnewspaper.com/

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