By (The Rev.) George Conger
Before they can be consecrated, the Rev. Canon Barry Beisner (who is bishop-elect of Northern California) and four other diocesan bishop-elects must receive confirmation from a majority of Bishops and Deputies to the 75th General Convention. Overseas church leaders and traditionalists in the Episcopal Church have expressed concern that the consecration of Canon Beisner will render meaningless approval of Resolution A161, which urges the Church to “exercise very considerable caution” in electing any person “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.”
Canon Beisner has been divorced twice and married three times. There is no single standard exercised by the Anglican Communion on divorce and remarriage. In the overwhelming majority of Anglican churches in the Global South, however remarriage after divorce is viewed as adultery and grounds for dismissal from the ministry. Within the Episcopal Church, each diocese exercises its own standard.
Concerns over divorce and remarriage are valid questions to be asked of any candidate for the episcopate, Canon Beisner said in a June 2 telephone interview with The Living Church. But the power of God to transform and redeem a sinner, even in the midst of the “death of a marriage,” should not be discounted, he added.
Canon Beisner said he was “very immature” when he first married at age 19.
“After three years and just about the time I was graduating from college, the woman who was then my wife abandoned my son and me,” he said. “I was the single parent of a two-year-old at that point.” Counseled to seek an annulment, he declined. “It seemed something like a legal fiction, especially when I looked at my own son,” he said.
His second marriage “was 16 years in length” and produced two children. He would not discuss the reasons for the breakdown, honoring the privacy of his family.
“What I can say is that I do know first hand, the death of a relationship. I know that divorce whenever or however it comes about is always a tragedy. It is a failure routed in human sinfulness,” he said.
Eight years ago, Canon Beisner married the Rev Ann Hallisey after obtaining the permission of Northern California Bishop Jerry A. Lamb. He said that his marital history did not serve as bar to his election among traditionalist colleagues. The local members of the “Anglican Network” and the “more conservative and orthodox clergy voted for me very nearly as a block, not because they don’t have questions about divorce and remarriage,” but “because they know and trust me,” he said.
Within the Anglican Communion, only the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Church in Wales have permitted divorced and remarried clergy to serve as bishops. A handful of active diocesan bishops in the Episcopal Church are divorced and remarried. If affirmed by convention, Canon Beisner will be the first twice divorced and thrice-married priest to be consecrated a bishop.
The diocese has “experienced me as someone that they would like to have as pastor,” he said. “I think I am certainly a better pastor, I know I was certainly a better parish pastor, for having lived through the death of a marriage.”
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