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E-mail StoryEpiscopal leader appoints clergyman to serve Bakersfield churches
| Friday, Jan 25 2008 11:03 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 25 2008 9:46 AM
A national Episcopal leader visited Bakersfield Thursday, heard believers’ concerns about the San Joaquin Diocese’s recent secession from the church and appointed a local clergyman as a temporary missionary priest to serve Bakersfield area believers.
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He also said the national church considers the diocese’s Dec. 8 decision to place itself under overseas Anglican rule illegal.
The Rev. Canon Robert Moore, of Seattle, who was appointed by the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, as an “interim pastoral presence” in the San Joaquin Valley, spent the day in the greater Bakersfield area as part of a five-day “listening tour” that will culminate in a valley-wide conference in Hanford on Saturday.
At a Thursday night gathering of 60 to 70 believers and clergy at First Congregational Church and hosted by Remain Episcopal in the Diocese of San Joaquin, a faith community opposed to the split, Moore received hearty applause when he announced he had appointed the Rev. Tim Vivian, a Bakersfield resident, to a “temporary pastoral position as missionary priest under my direct supervision, which puts him within the jurisdiction of the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.”
Moore thus opened the way for Vivian to administer sacraments such as marriage, baptism and the eucharist to local believers who don’t have a parish to go to, as all three diocesan parishes in Bakersfield voted in favor of the split. Vivian is a Remain Episcopal member and a licensed priest canonically resident in Los Angeles, meaning he could perform priestly duties in that diocese but not in San Joaquin without proper licensing or consent.
“There’s no bishop to license him” locally, Moore said, since Jefferts Schori formally declared on Jan. 11 that San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield, who led the diocesan split, had abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church and “inhibited,” or stopped, his duties as a bishop. Vivian’s temporary assignment will cease “as soon as there is a new bishop,” Moore said.
“We’re inventing it as we go,” Moore said about the arduous process of rebuilding the split-up church, and said the night’s meeting was “not confrontational or to change anybody’s mind,” and its focus was “reconciliation and serving those who wish to stay.”
But he also said, “It is the national church’s position that a lot of what has happened here is not legal. People can leave the church. A bishop can leave the church. A diocese cannot.
“There are lawyers on both sides that are getting prepared for whatever legal battles need to happen,” he said. Most of those gathered were in favor of remaining within the Episcopal Church.
“When I heard that we’d been voted out I cried and cried and cried,” said Susan Ohanneson, who used to worship at St. Paul’s Parish downtown. “It felt like a divorce. It felt like we’d been hijacked. I’m a cradle Episcopalian,” she said.
Ohanneson said Schofield had done much damage to valley parishes. “I’m glad that we’re here for healing,” she said. “We’re growing since the diocese voted to leave,” Remain Episcopal member Eddy Laine said.
Fellow believer Michael Gardner agreed.
“Until the last couple of months, the people at the different churches hadn’t realized what had happened and now that the churches are changing their names to Anglican, they’re realizing what has come about and in essence saying, ‘Oh, I wanted to stay Episcopalian.’”
Moore plans to meet with some 300 clergy and laity in the Lodi, Fresno, Stockton, Bakersfield and Visalia areas by the end of Friday, and said he was expecting a big crowd at the Saturday Hanford meeting that will take place at Church of the Saviour and will be streamed live at Episcopal Life Online, www.episcopalchurch.org.