A day of shame for America
and the Episcopal Church
Robert Stowe England |
1 December 2001
ACCOKEEK, Maryland -- Yesterday, Friday, November 30, was a gray overcast day, sufficiently gloomy to capture the tone of a dramatic and sad occasion.
It was the day that Christ Church's rector emeritus Fr. Samuel Edwards, his wife Kay, his son David, 15, his daughter Rachel, 12, and their two cats -- Smudge and Hilda -- were forced out of the rectory along with their worldy possessions.
They have moved to a smaller house in Clinton, whose unnamed landlady has agreed to give them the space for free while an appeals goes forward to court order ousting Fr. Edwards as rector from the parish.
Friday, November 30, is really the result of the unfortunate events of October 29 -- the day Judge Peter J. Messitte of the U.S. District Court of Maryland in Greenbelt placed the long arm of the law -- including armed federal marshalls if deemed necessary -- at the disposal of one of the most hated and vengeful prelates in the Episcopal Church, Acting Bishop Jane Dixon of Washington, D.C.
In the end, it was more than just a sad day. It was a day of shame for America and a day of shame for the Episcopal Church.
It appears to mark the first time in American history an ecclesiastical authority has resorted to secular power to intervene in an essentially theological dispute and to oust a faithful Christian from his ministry.
The ouster violates the most cherised, sacred and fundamental principles of our U.S. consitution and our liberties and freedoms as Americans.
It is also a day of shame for the Episcopal Church, a once proud Christian institution, that can now said to be only a play thing for the radical clerics that dominate it and who, above all else, despise the very foundations of the church, even Jesus Christ, and are willing to use their ecclesiastical authority in the service of the enemies of Christ.
At the heart of the shame is a betrayal of the public trust by two people entrusted with authority and power. Dixon betrayed her ordination vows to the church and to God. Messitte betrayed the U.S. Constitution he vowed to uphold and the even-handed justice he vowed to execute as a judge.
As someone who has reported on this ongoing disaster from the beginning, it is a day deeply etched into my mind and one I will never forget.
A somber Fr. Edwards, attorney Charles Nalls, Senior Warden Barbara Sturman, and Junior Warden Frank McDonough faced the cameras and the questions of reporters. More than 100 supporters of Fr. Edwards surrounded him, including 30 strong men from Save the Seed, a predominantly African-American Bible church based in White Plains, Maryland.
After the press conference the men from Save the Seed -- many of whom have been helping Fr. Edwards -- stood in lines on either side of the winding path to the door of the rectory like soldiers of the Lord. The waited until Fr. Edwards brought out his suitcase to leave for his new home before they, too, departed en mass.
The old two-story clapboard siding rectory looked forlorn, with its door standing wide open for anyone to enter or leave. Its paint was peeling under the gutters. Leaves were strewn across the yard and even onto the porch. A gust of wind cast them about from time to time.
A walk through the rectory found most rooms empty and swept clean. The cats were in the basement -- one in hiding, the other placed there to keep her from running outside and getting lost. Kay was still packing in the master bedroom.
The Press Conference
Outside the questions from the press were few, sympathetic and supportive. Members of the press who had tilted their stories to make to favor Dixon stayed away for the most part, apparently to avoid any news that might reflect badly on their feminist heroine. This was a shameful act of omission on their part.
Members of the congregation present spoke out or asked questions, too, to fill a void of silence that settled in from time to time.
Fr. Edwards was not in his collar because it intefered with his packing and moving boxes, he explains. Nalls, recently ordained to the diaconate in the Anglian Provice of Christ the King, was in his collar.
Mrs. Sturman, who had helped in the packing, was also dressed for work. As always, she was resolute in face of adversity visited on the parish by Dixon.
"I've spent the last two days packing boxes," Mrs. Sturman said. "What a waste of time and energy the diocese has spent keeping a godly man out of the diocese. It is persecution to the max."
Noting that the diocese has acknowledge spending $440,000 on its lawsuit against Fr. Edwards and the parish and was likely to spend over a million dollars before the appeal is decided, Mrs. Sturman said, "It's a crime. That money could be used feeding and clothing the poor."
Mrs. Sturman, when asked, said she has never been able to find a convincing rationale for why Dixon's personal grudge against Fr. Edwards. "We asked for a traditionalist minster, a family man," Mrs. Sturman said, "and that's him right," she said, pointing to Fr. Edwards.
When asked if the ousting of Fr. Edwards did not, in fact, make the Episcopal Church "the Unchurch," a term Fr. Edwards used in his writings and which was cited by Dixon with great alarm. "This diocese is making those words come true today," she said. "There is nothing godly about the way we are being treated today."
Mrs. Sturman, in response to another question, also reported that Dixon is interfering in the ministry of the interim rector, Fr. Stephen Arpee, noting Dixon prevented him from preaching and celebrating mass by sending down other priests and a bishop to oversee the services and allow Fr. Arpee to play only a minor role. She is able to do this because of Judge Messitte's order expanding her powers.
The likelihood that Dixon would abuse any order that gave her access to the parish "is exactly what I brought to Judge Messitte's attention in August," said Nalls, during a hearing on motions filed in response to Dixon's lawsuit.
The deluge of Dixon-authorized visits of priests and bishops every Sunday and Dixon's taking over as rector ex officio and running vestry meetings "is not an Epsicopal visitation" as envisaged in the canons "but a hostile takoever," Nalls said. "It's corporate raider meets small southern Maryland parish."
Evidence of a plot by Dixon supporters in the parish to bring in people who are not parish members and have them vote at the next annual meeting have surfaced in recent weeks. Parishioner George Hanssen, a curmudgeon who has lambasted members of the parish with invective from time to time, has taken credit for preparing what parish officials says are phony pledge cards. There were 44 of the cards placed in the offering plates by those attending services on November 3. Nearly half of those cards were signed by people who have never attended the parish, according to Wes Courtney, vestry member and life-long member of the parish.
Junior Warden Frank McDonough took Dixon to task for her views that Fr. Edwards. "She calls Fr. Edwards unfit to be a priest because of his writings and saying such things as the UnChurch," he said. Yet, the leaders of the church have done nothing to repudiate bishops who deny the Christian faith. "Why has the Episcopal Church not come out in opposition statements by Bishop Spong, who says the whole of Christianity is a fairy tale, that Mary was a whore and Joseph was gay." Spong is the controversial former Bishop of Newark, N.J.
McDonough said that on one visit to the parish, Dixon was asked what she thought of Bishop Spong. "She said he's an intellectual. He's a godly man and I support him. She supports that and she won't support this," McDonough said, meaning she would not support Fr. Edwards.
Nalls faulted Judge Messitte for his unconstitutional interference in the parish. "What this boils down to is that a federal court has reached into a matter that is essentially a church matter," he said. "It crosses the wall of separation between church and state."
The court has no right to be making decisions about the conduct of religious services. It violates Fr. Edwards's constitutional rights, Nalls said. "It's disturbing that a federal court can make a pronouncment on the conduct of a priest." He said that Judge Messitte apparently realized that he had raised some constitutional issues with his order and had modified his order that Fr. Edwards could not hold religious services "on or near" the property of Christ Church to say that he would not be allowed to hold religious services "within 300 feet" of the property. Even with this change, it remains a unconsitutional interference in the rights of Fr. Edwards, Nalls said.
Nalls also faulted the the diocese's chief litigator David Schnorrenberg of Crowell & Moring, for harrassing the vestry with claims of misconduct and threatening to have Judge Messitte declare them in contempt of the court. Schnorrenberg has sent a flurry of letters on the matter.
Schnorrenberg, for example, claimed there was an illegal vestry meeting on November 3 when the vestry briefly conferred with their attorney Nalls to determine if they could legally go forward with a vote on a motion that had been introduced at a regularly scheduled congregational meeting. Messitte had declared that no vestry meeting could occur without a representative of the diocese present. Calling this a vestry meeting was a deliberate stretch aimed at creating a phony issue, Nalls said.
Nalls contends Schnorreberg's threats are designed to improperly intimidate the vestry, make them more amenable to Dixon's efforts to thwart their rightful powers. Yet, Nalls notes, these threats from Schnorrenberg are going forward even as attempts are being made to overthrow the vestry.
"I've twice asked the diocese why this is happening and I've not been answered," Nalls said.
Fr. Edwards' Parting Comments
Fr. Edwards was philosophical and showed no bitterness about his persecution and his plight. When queried about the significance of the day, he said he had been reflecting for some weeks on the diocese's use of the word reconciliation.
"It's a very different version of reconciliation than what Christ teaches, which is the reconciliation to the truth of God. It is through reconciliation to that, that we are reconciled to others," he explainedDixon's reconciliation is, instead, not getting people to be reconciled with one another but getting those who oppose to her to agree with her and then "we'll all be reconciled." This is not reconciliation at all, he said.
This distorted view of reconciliation reminded him of a Latin phrase. "They created a desert and they called in reconciliation."
When asked, "What is this day all about? What does it mean?" Fr. Edwards replied: "It's another day in the head-on collision between those who know the truth [in Christ] and try to conform to it and the world view that you acquire as much power as you can and exericse it as much as possible."
The battle has been going on for thousands of years, Fr. Edwards noted. He pointed out that the current struggle was similar to one of the temptations of Christ in the desert before he began his ministry. "The devil took Christ to the mountains," he said, and as he showed him all the dominions of the world, he said, "I'll give you all this if you worship me."
"The essence of the current struggle is the same," Fr. Edwards said. "It's yet one more stage in the evolution of the truth about what the Episcopal Church is."
"Is the Episcopal Church a constitutional body or even a church at all?" Fr. Edwards asked. "Or, is it content to live under whatever truth is offered, a truth that can change from day to day and is sometimes in contradiction with itself?"
One reporter asked, "Has God abandoned you?" Fr. Edwards replied, "We were told this would happen the day we signed up for this duty. It's part of the enlistment contract. The Bible says the day will come when people will kill you and will think they are doing God a favor."
Fr. Edwards recalled that he had stated at a parish meeting back in March, "It is not my priesthood. It is His priesthood. If I'm not willing to hazard all for Him, I'm not fit to be in it."
Has this last year been difficult for Fr. Edwards. No, he says. "This has turned out to be one of the easiest things I have done." He said that his ouster was part of a God's larger plan that probably no one now knows or understands. "I don't need to know. I'll be told later," he said.
Why is Fr. Edwards voluntarily complying with the court order? His reply: "However wrong I believe the court order is, still we have a duty to conform to it and that's what we are about to do."
He explained why. "It would not do any good if I were saying uphold the rule of law in the church and I didn't uphold it in the state," he said.
"This is hardly the first time that a religious authority has resorted to secular law to get his way ecclesiastically," Fr. Edwards said, noting that religious authorities of ancient Jersualem had Jesus was brought before the civil authorities to have him killed and thereby silence him and his message.
When asked what he planned to do, he said he would devote some of his "sabbatical" to trying to get someone to publish a book he had written more than a year ago. He also planned to take some time to "sit on the porch and smoke my pipe."
Judging from comments made in conversations with parishioners at the press conference, Dixon's ongoing interference in the parish's life since Fr. Edwards ouster is increasing already high levels of resentment toward her. Her inteference with the ministry of the interim, Fr. Arpee, has many of them fuming. "Bishop Dixion appears to be opposed to anyone we select," said Dixie Otis, a parishioner who had been a member of the parish since 1960. Never in all that time has an interim rector be treated so badly by the diocese as Dixon is now treating Fr. Arpee, she said.
"I was in favor of Fr. Edwards staying," Otis said. "He's been great. He's run a fascinating Bible study. I've been extremely happy with him." She also likes Fr. Arpee.
Otis, who supports women's ordination, said she had been more tolerant of the diocese's objections to Fr. Edwards, since Dixon had an understandable concern he might take the parish out of the Episcopal Church. "Now she is opposed to Fr. Arpee, too.There's no basis I can see for the way she has behaved toward Fr. Arpee. It has made by very angry. I have no sympathy for her," Otis said.
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