Episcopalians ‘need time to reflect’ Maine bishop mum about her vote on gay ordination compromise measure

BANGOR – The toughest vote Harold “Brownie” Brown ever cast in his 72 years was not for president or governor or his state representative.

Voting last week to place a moratorium on the ordination of gay and lesbian bishops in the Episcopal Church was very hard, the Bangor resident who attends St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Brewer, said Wednesday.

“I don’t like it, but I can live with it,” Brown said of the compromise resolution that calls for restraint in consecrating bishops “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.”

Brown headed the delegation of clergy and lay Episcopalians from Maine that attended the 10-day convention in Columbus, Ohio. He and three other lay members, four clergy, along with alternates and Bishop Chilton Knudsen represented the state’s 17,000 Episcopalians.

The most controversial topic of discussion was how to respond to the worldwide Anglican Communion’s demand that the U.S. Episcopal Church impose a moratorium on the election and consecration of gay and lesbian bishops. Conservative leaders around the world had asked for a much stronger response. The resolution that passed is nonbinding.

Many Anglican leaders were angered by the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Robinson voted for the compromise.

“There was a real feeling that if we went along with it, we would be walking away from our dear friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are gay and lesbian,” he said.

Brown also said that he resented the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that apparently went on in attempts to pressure the convention to pass a compromise, after it rejected a more stringent resolution, to avoid a schism in the Anglican Communion.

However, he was moved to support the compromise by the Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori, from Nevada, who urged deputies to pass it.

“I wanted to allow her to be at the table” with Anglican bishops from around the world, said Brown, who was surprised but delighted by her election. “I thought that we couldn’t instantly tie her hands.”

Three of the four lay deputies voted for the compromise, according to Brown. All four of the deputies who are clergy voted against it.

Maine priests who attended convention were reluctant last week to talk about how they voted.

“I’m still sorting it through,” the Rev. Anne Stanley of Christ Episcopal Church in Norway said Thursday. “We’ll be getting together once we all get back and are rooted in our congregations again. We’ll be making a statement together, but we’re not quite there yet. We need time to reflect to get perspective.”

Bishop Chilton Knudsen said in an interview last week that the Maine delegation supported the compromise measure. On Friday, the bishop declined through spokeswoman Hiedi Shott to say how she voted on the measure, which was decided by a show of hands rather than a record voice or written ballot. Knudsen, Shott said in an e-mail, will reveal how she voted on the measure and why in a column to be published in the August issue of The Northeast, the diocesan newspaper.

Leading the delegation was a familiar role for Brown, who has attended every national convention, held once every three years, over the past 24 years.

He was not at the convention more than 30 years ago when the Episcopal Church voted to ordain women to the priesthood and opened the door for them to become bishops.

Brown said Wednesday, however, that he remembers the debate around that issue and it was decidedly different in tone. Episcopalians who opposed the ordination of women did not wave their Bibles and point to Scripture but based their arguments on church tradition.

“Now, there’s an underlying homophobia that enters the debate,” Brown said. “There are an awful lot of people who are not able to accept the fact that homosexuality is not a thing of choice. … Every one of us is a child of God. He sent his son to Earth to tell us to ‘Love one another as I have loved you.'”

Brown thinks one of the reasons for the current problems is that the internal structures of the Anglican Communion in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and Canada are modeled on democratic principles. Other provinces are more autocratic and the people in the pews have little say, he said.

In many aspects, the way the Episcopal Church functions is similar to the U.S. government.

Lay and clergy members are elected to the House of Deputies, which has about 1,000 members, from each diocese at diocesan conventions. Lay deputies and clerical deputies cast separate votes.

Bishops serve in a separate body, the House of Bishops, which had 188 voting members.

Brown emphasized that while the debate over gay and lesbian bishops dominated the news, the convention accomplished much more than that, including seeking a communion with the United Methodist Church, developing a strategy for model ministry in response to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, and creating a commission to gather a collection of music to broaden the cultural breadth of liturgical music.

The most important resolution passed in Columbus, Brown said, was the adoption of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which called on all congregations to undertake and support partnerships for global development in impoverished countries.

In addition to Stanley, the clergy deputies were: the Rev. Canon Linton Studdiford, Portland; the Rev. Christopher Chornyak, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, Ellsworth; and the Rev. Paige Blair, St. George’s Episcopal Church, York Harbor.

The lay deputies in addition to Brown were: Peter Bickford, Christ Episcopal Church, Norway; Rita Redfield, St. Andrew and St. John Episcopal Church, Southwest Harbor; and Brenda Hamilton, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Newcastle.