By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 16, 2007; B01
If the Episcopal Church has been a rocky boat in recent decades, Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee has been one of its anchors.
Liberals and conservatives alike have described the white-coiffed Southerner -- one of the most senior bishops in the U.S. church -- as a moderate statesman. When a conservative group of parishioners split from his North Carolina church in the 1970s over women's ordination, he was in the front pew when members opened their new church. Although he wouldn't approve same-sex commitment ceremonies in Virginia, he encouraged clergy to bless couples' homes instead.
But as the genteel bishop prepares to retire after almost 40 years, he has become a national lighting rod while leading the diocese in a bitter property dispute with a handful of breakaway conservative congregations. Suddenly a foe of traditionalists and the commander of an unsightly legal battle, Lee, a 68-year-old former newspaper reporter, is facing an unexpected closing chapter to his legacy.
Although Virginia is hardly the only Episcopal diocese with divisions over issues of sexuality and Scripture -- issues that are roiling other Christian denominations -- how Lee handles the dispute is high-profile because it involves some of the largest, oldest Episcopal congregations in the country. The churches are also led by nationally well-known conservatives, including Bishop Martyn Minns.
"Virginia is the largest diocese in the country, and we are a microcosm of theological viewpoints, so I think people are looking to see what happens here," said the Rev. Martha J. Horne, dean of Virginia Theological Seminary, the largest Anglican seminary in the world.
The breach is the culmination of years of brewing displeasure among conservatives who feel the U.S. church has watered down the literal meaning Scripture. Things came to a head in recent weeks when 11 Virginia congregations voted to leave the U.S. church and join the Church of Nigeria -- and to keep their valuable properties. Lee moved swiftly to remove credentials of the conservative priests, declare their churches abandoned property and file lawsuits asking courts to declare the churches property of the diocese, which comprises 182 congregations.
Since then, he has been vilified by conservatives who say he led them to believe before the vote that it would be possible for them to keep their properties under a settlement. Conservative blogs accuse him of caving to national Episcopal leaders. He has been called a traitor, a weakling.
Lee "feels that he has a franchise right to Anglicanism . . . much as a medieval lord might have rights to his domain, his serfs," the Rev. David Anderson, head of the American Anglican Council, a group of traditionalist U.S. parishes, wrote on the council's Web site last month.
And Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, a national conservative leader who worked with Lee in the late 1970s when they were based in Chapel Hill, N.C., said: "Bishop Lee's episcopate would have been recorded as one of the great ministries. He was always in the middle, always tried to be fair to both sides, and in this one he winds up, as many see it, as the oppressor. What a sad, sad end."
Once close friends, Duncan and Lee skipped the dinner last summer that they have shared every year at the denomination's annual meeting, Duncan said. "Some day we'll sit in rocking chairs and talk about it. For now, I know we still pray for each other."
Conversely, Lee has become something of a hero for some moderates.
"We have been in the presence of greatness, and I don't say that lightly," said Henry D.W. Burt, a Richmond lawyer who has worked for the diocese off and on since the 1980s. "He has tried and tried and tried to keep all the players at the table. This isn't his fault."
That the ruddy-faced, deep-voiced Lee might go down in history as an ally of liberals, in opposition to the more traditional evangelical Episcopalians, is odd.
Shortly after he was elected to lead the Virginia Diocese, he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that evangelization was his top priority. And over the years, as tensions built over the correct Scriptural view of homosexuality, and conservative congregations began to withdraw their financial support from the diocese and the national church, Lee continued to appoint conservatives to top positions.
He has refused to ordain non-celibate gay or lesbian priests and to authorize the blessing of same-sex unions. But over the past few decades, he said in a recent interview, he has thought hard about the nature of those unions.
"I've had more knowledge of mature, same-sex couples, and I don't see how they are a threat to traditional marriage," he said. "We live in a confusing time and people want certainty. But that level of certitude is something that I find alien to the breadth of our tradition."
In that vein, he voted in 2003 for the election of an openly gay New Hampshire bishop. In the months that followed, some churches told him he was not welcome to visit. Parents asked him not to lay hands on their children at confirmation. He received death threats.
He gave a sermon in 2005, however, saying he regretted the vote, calling it a "unilateral" move at a tender time. Last year, he served on a committee at the denomination's general convention urging caution on electing any more openly gay or lesbian bishops.
"People like me who tend to be solidly on the left wing on gay issues have not seen him on our side," said Jim Naughton, spokesman for the Diocese of Washington.
Soon, history will have its say about Lee's tenure, during which the diocese grew from 80,000 to 90,000 members. Last month, a Mississippi priest was elected to replace Lee, who has until 2010 to step down.
"Sometimes, when I've had a good night's sleep, I begin to look at this as God's gift to Ph.D. students in 50 years," he said. "I think we'll end this in 10 or 20 or 30 years with a renewed sense of inclusiveness. And we'll wonder what this was all about."
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