Religious battle in Attleboro

Saturday, February 3, 2007

By Richard C. Dujardin
Journal Religion Writer

ATTLEBORO — The fight between the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and a dissident congregation that voted last October to drop its ties to the diocese and to align itself with a more conservative diocese in Africa has taken a new turn.

Until last month, leaders of All Saints Anglican Church were expressing hope that they could still work out a deal with Massachusetts Episcopal Bishop Thomas Shaw that would allow them continued use of their beloved fortress-like building on North Main Street, through either a lease agreement or a purchase similar to the one worked out between Rhode Island Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf and the former St. Andrew and St. Philip Church in Coventry last year.

But those hopes evaporated when the diocese informed the rector, the Rev. Lance Giuffrida, two weeks ago that he and other dissidents would only have a week to turn over the keys and clear out so as to make room for a congregation wanting to remain loyal and faithful to the Episcopal Church.

Stunned parishioners held a teary-eyed farewell service last Sunday — one in which the rector assured nearly 200 in attendance that they would soon have a new home.

This week, leaders announced that All Saints Anglican parish — not to be confused with the Attleboro’s St. James African Anglican parish, whose members are predominantly Kenyan and are tied to the Anglican Church of Kenya — will be moving its services to Fisher College in North Attleboro until a new permanent location is found.

The move came as the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts unveiled its own plan to provide services this weekend and every Sunday thereafter for any member of the parish who never wanted to leave the Episcopal Church.

AS IF TO UNDERSCORE the global dimensions of this spiritual divide, the Massachusetts Diocese plans to have retired Bishop Barbara Harris, who made history as the first woman ever to be ordained a bishop in the world-wide Anglican communion, will take part in a service that will be led by the Rev. William Underhill, at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the original All Saints Church on North Main Street. All Saints Anglican, meanwhile, plans to have a bishop from Tanzania, the Right Rev. Jackton Lugumira, preach at its services at 9 and 11 a.m.

Ron Wheelock, a former senior warden and a deacon assistant for All Saints Anglican says “people need to understand that our parish has not moved. From a theological standpoint, we have stood firm with the faith and with the Anglican Communion. It is the Episcopal Church that has broken away not only from us but from the Anglican Communion.”

To be sure, the question of who is breaking away from whom is a matter of debate these days.

While the Attleboro parish, along with a significant number of Anglican prelates in Africa and some 150 parishes across the country, insist that the Episcopal Church has broken its ties to the wider Anglican Communion by straying from traditional teachings on homosexuality by allowing the ordination in 2003 of an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire, most Episcopal clergy note that the U.S. church is still in communion with the titular leader of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury. A number of Anglican church leaders in Africa have announced they no longer consider the Episcopal Church to be part of the same following.

Father Giuffrida said his parish’s break with the Episcopal Diocese took place in October when the parish was officially received into the Anglican Mission in America, a group of churches in the United States that have placed themselves under the spiritual authority of Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda.

The church’s mission now, Wheelock said, is to be a “lighthouse” for all “orthodox” Christians in Episcopal parishes in the surrounding area who are no longer comfortable calling themselves Episcopalians because of the denomination’s “liberal” views.

As the rector and a number of other parish leaders see it, the stand taken by Bishop Shaw reflects what they see as a new and “vicious” strategy on the part of the Episcopal Church nationally — to take a hardline approach toward congregations wanting to leave and take the property with them. This week, 11 congregations in Virginia that recently announced they were quitting the Episcopal Church were told by the state’s Episcopal bishop to surrender all their assets. The Virginia diocese filed suit against all of their vestries and individual members.

Maria Plati, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Diocese, said Bishop Shaw felt he had no choice but to act the way he did because there were still loyal Episcopalians who wanted to worship at All Saints and “we had an obligation to let them use their building.”

The approach taken by Bishop Shaw is notably different from the one used by Bishop Wolf last year in Rhode Island, and different from the approach taken by the Episcopal bishop in Olympia, Wash., who offered the conservative parishes a seven-year grace period in which they could continue to use the property for the next seven years at no charge and without having to pay any diocesan assessment.

THE FIGHT OVER ownership of property stems from a policy put into place by the Episcopal Church 30 years ago when it required all parishes within the denomination to turn over the deeds of their property to their respective dioceses.

Most parishes at the time turned over their deeds willingly, but some now see it as a mistake. The Rev. Mark Galloway, rector of the former St. Andrew and St. Philip Church in Coventry, now the Church of the Apostles, said the main reason why his conservative parish has not affiliated with one of the leaders of the Anglican church in Nigeria, as announced last year, is a concern that the parish would have to deed its property over to the Nigerian church. The parish, he said, does not want to make the same mistake twice.

He acknowledged that from his perspective, remaining in the Anglican Communion is now secondary. “We at the Church of the Apostles see ourselves as evangelical Christians who happen to be Anglican. If it is possible to remain in the Anglican world, hallelujah. But it is not our primary goal. Our primary goal is to remain faithful to Jesus Christ.”

This article comes from The Providence Journal
http://www.projo.com/

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