Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon
says "NO" to Accokeek

16 March 2001

ACCOKEEK, MD -- Traditionalism and revisionism, Episcopal-style, are headed for a face-off Sunday at a usually quiet colonial-era church south of Washington, D.C.

Christ Church, Accokeek, wants a former executive director of Forward in Faith/North America as its new rector. Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon says, never mind what the parish wants, it can't have him.

Dixon, a suffragan who has administered the diocese of Washington since the retirement last December of Bishop Ronald Haines, has summoned by certified mail the whole parish to meet with her at 4 p.m. Sunday.

The reception committee - if any - could be small. Parish leaders, considering the call valid and the matter settled, have no plans to meet with Dixon. "I don't know what's going to happen, to tell you the truth'' senior warden Barbara Sturman told FOUNDATIONS.

Christ Church bylaws specify a 10-day advance period for the calling of any parish meeting, Sturman said.

Edwards, who has a written contract with Christ Church and plans to take up the rectorship April 1, despite Dixon's increasingly strident attempts to bar him, will worship with the congregation Sunday. Interim rector Robert Stephenson, Jr., on his last official day at the parish, will celebrate and preach. Stephenson, without notifying the vestry, invited Dixon to come Sunday morning and answer questions about the controversy. A previous engagement at another parish resulted in Dixon's calling on the parish family to gather in the afternoon, at an hour no service is held.

Diocesan officials planned to issue a statement over the weekend regarding their motives and hopes for the meeting. "We want [Edwards] here," said Sturman. "He deserves to be here. We have done everything possible to make it possible for him to be here."

Though unaffiliated with FIF/NA, Christ Church is a mostly traditional parish hoping to heal wounds left by the last rector, who, said Sturman, "ripped us apart pushing the agenda of the diocese. It ended up destroying us."

Ironically, the diocesan standing committee touts "great diversity and intentional inclusivity" as diocesan hallmarks. The short statement gives no definition of "inclusivity."

The Edwards family is scheduled March 20 to begin its move from Fort Worth, where Edwards, a scholarly Nashotah House graduate, directed the daily operations of Forward in Faith/North America before his resignation last September.

Canon lawyer Charles Nalls, Washington, D. C., affirms the historic parish's canonical right to call Edwards, an Episcopal priest in good standing, notwithstanding Dixon's voluble objections to the 46-year-old priest's oft-expressed orthodox views, Nalls said.

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold III Friday backed up Dixon in a statement, accusing Edwards of "antipathy -- far beyond comment and critique -- toward the church in which he was ordained." Despite his lofty title, Griswold lacks canonical authority to impose a solution favorable to Dixon.

In a letter to Christ Church's vestry, purporting to disallow the call to Edwards, Dixon recoiled from articles by Edwards published in FOUNDATIONS, blasting the Episcopal Church's descent from orthodoxy to revisionism. In one 1997 article Edwards called the Episcopal Church "the Unchurch" -- a pastiche on C. S. Lewis' characterization of a villainous fictional character, the "Un-Man." Dixon was offended likewise by a 1998 article accusing the Episcopal Church of practicing "institutionalized lawlessness."

Dixon, 64 and scheduled to retire soon after diocesan convention next January elects Haines' successor, accused Edwards of refusing in an earlier meeting to recognize her as an Anglican bishop.

Not so, Edwards told FOUNDATIONS. "As I recall," he said, "her very first question was whether I recognized her as a bishop of the Anglican Communion."

"My response was that, since the Communion (via the Archbishop of Canterbury's invitation to her to participate as a bishop in the Lambeth Conference) and since such institutional recognition was beyond my personal competence anyway, I could recognize that she served as a bishop in the Anglican Communion . . . [I said] I could recognize her in her institutional role as my administrative superior, but not in the sacramental/ordinal role."

Nalls further rebutted Dixon's contention that Edwards fails to meet canonical qualifications as a rector. "We believe,'' he told Dixon in a letter, "that what really is at issue here is Fr. Edwards' refusal to guarantee uncritical and unqualified obedience to the institutional powers of the Diocese of Washington. No Christian can give such a commitment and long remain faithful to his baptismal vows."

Church canons give the diocese 30 days to object to the vestry's choice of a rector. Dixon anxieties cropped up weeks after the deadline had passed."Dixon, a Mississippian consecrated as suffragan bishop in 1992, is widely known throughout Anglicanism for officially foisting herself upon parishes unwilling to acknowledge the sacramental authority of a woman bishop. One rector, while his unwilling parish received the bishop's sacramental attentions, read a newspaper in the back of the church. Dixon contended in her letter to Christ Church's vestry that Edwards might obstruct any visit by her to the parish. The rector-elect denied that he would inflict any incivility on her.

Washington Episcopalian, and free-lance writer, Robert Stowe England in a web posting charges that Dixon and Haines "have actively sought to place non-celibate homosexuals in parishes throughout the diocese and have been very successful in their efforts..." Likewise, says England, "Heavy interference in the call of a rector, traditionally the province of the vestry, is nothing new in the diocese."

Why not withdraw from such a situation as Edwards finds himself in? Because, said Edwards, "I was elected and called by the vestry in accordance with the canons and civil statutes of the State of Maryland and do not consider it appropriate to withdraw without the advice and consent of that body."

He said further "It is evident to me that the Diocese of Washington failed to raise objections to the call at any time during the canonically defined period of 'not more than 30 days' after the vestry's formal notification of their intent to call me."

Edwards said Dixon's assertion that the bishops calls rectors in behalf of the vestry "is a fond thing, vainly invented, with no foundation in the canon law of the Episcopal Church or in the civil statutes of the State of Maryland."