Bp Dixon wants Sam Edwards out ... NOW

Foundations | July 2001

... But she did anyway.

The "unrighteous" of Washington, D. C. - reputedly a large tribe - are in for a feast: Episcopal bishop, unable to pry apart a traditionalist rector and a small Maryland parish, begs a federal district court to do the honors.

On June 25, Jane Holmes Dixon filed a suit in a Maryland federal district court, seeking relief under the 1798 Maryland Vestry Act. She prays the court to prohibit the Rev. Samuel L. Edwards from "officiating at religious services" at Christ Church, Accokeek.

Likewise Dixon seeks a court order enabling her to perform "her duties" at the parish, "including officiating at services and ministering to its congregation," as well as "presiding at its Vestry and parish meetings."

Thus the internationally bruited dispute over ecclesiastical rights at a previously unknown parish takes its ugliest turn yet. What the spiritual leader of the Diocese of Washington wants, should it come to that, is for federal marshals to show up at Christ Church rectory, removing the rector and his family physically from the premises. The marshals then would hold church doors open while in sashayed none other than Jane Dixon, staff in hand, to tell a group of disobedient Episcopalians who really was running things.

No way, the embattled parish replied unhesitatingly. Declared senior warden Barbara Sturman at a June 29 press conference on the sun-dappled lawn: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are the victims of a new intolerance in the Episcopal Church - intolerance for traditional Christians. The bishop who said she wanted to minister to us, to pastor us, has chosen instead to persecute us." What began at Christ Church as a theological controversy is turning, against the parish's intentions, into a mud wrestle - a match the bishop pro tempore of Washington has shown she means to win, no holds barred.

"Win'' is a word whose connotations may seem ironic at the end. "Winning," for Jane Dixon, could mean destroying a parish that had yearned for some old-fashioned orthodox teaching, only to find its bishop enlisting the civil authorities against the elected vestry and their chosen teacher.

Not only that, but Dixon herself could face the embarrassment of a presentment by orthodox bishops or, alternatively, clergy and laity. No one - including such accusers as might line up in the cause (three bishops or two priests and nine laymen from one diocese) - would expect a move of this kind to succeed. Sixty-five bishops have signed a statement supporting Dixon's actions at Accokeek. The look of the thing - sheep calling the shepherd to account - would be the main consideration. On the other hand, Jane Dixon seems rarely to worry about the look of things. What the bishop wants most, clearly, is her own way.

Failing, on May 27, to force her way physically into Christ Church, Dixon withdrew for a time from the battlefield, taking counsel with lawyers and retainers. Court officers served Edwards with papers as he sat in his office.

Four days later (the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul), Christ Church leaders picked up the gauntlet Dixon had flung at their feet. Ace canon lawyer Charles Nalls, acting for the parish, and unintimidated in the face of muscle-flexing by a diocese with 94 congregations, noted the point likeliest to raise judicial eyebrows: What business of the federal courts was all this?

"This is an ecclesiastical matter," said Nalls - a matter that a federal court (granted the unwisdom of sweeping statements about the federal judiciary) seems likely to view as the principal concern of the Episcopal Church. "Separation of church and state" under the First Amendment would alone seem a large enough policy ground on which to repel Dixon's attack. Proving herself sovereign landlord of Christ Church, Accokeek, is a feat the church's colonial, pre-Episcopal Church charter may not permit.

Edwards disputed another piece of diocesan propaganda: the assertion, by a diocesan lawyer, that the battle is between episcopal authority and "congregationalism." The comment, said Edwards, contains "the implied notion that bishops are above the law. The Episcopal Church is not a church of bishops, and it is not a church of congregations. It includes bishops, priests, deacons, vestries, and lay people. It's a church where everybody lives under the law." Edwards charged Dixon with trying to "govern by whim and not by law," in the process usurping the power of vestries and other constituent players in the church.

Edwards' gentle moxie, cultivated during nearly a decade as executive director of the Episcopal Synod of America/Forward in Faith, can hardly be the least or lightest factor in Christ Church, Accokeek's, survival thus far. Dixon may have underrated the power of a confident religious faith. The bishop views the Accokeek brouhaha as a dispute over who's in charge. Edwards sees it theologically: a matter of "what authority the Holy Scriptures has in our lives." Do we follow what God has revealed to us through Scriptures, Edwards asked rhetorically at the press conference, "or do we make it up as we go along?"

Asked by one questioner (both Washington dailies, four TV stations, Fox News, and Episcopal priest-talk show jockey Les Kinsolving covered the Accokeek press conference) whether the struggle centered on good vs. evil, Edwards replied thoughtfully, "One of the strange and wonderful characteristics of Christians is that we engage in struggles between good and evil. When we struggle against evil, we strive not to see what we can gain for ourselves, but to see good prevail and to do it for the benefit of people that we are fighting against."

As for Dixon, "She is a soul for whom Christ died."

Meanwhile the intramural strife touched off by Dixon's declaration of war continues unabated at Accokeek. "It's even set husband against wife," senior warden Sturman recently told Episcopal journalist Robert Stowe England. Dixonians operate a sort of para parish on Sundays, at a local community center. Non-members of Christ Church make up the bulk of the congregation. Presiding at the outset: Bishop Ronald Hayward Haines, 66, whose sudden retirement last year thrust suffragan Dixon into the driver's seat. (A new bishop is scheduled to be consecrated next year.) Courtesy of a bishop determined to get what she wants, St. Paul's "unrighteous" - D. C. chapter - have a hot ticket getting hotter: the battle of the church against the church.