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North Hollywood Parish Is Third to Leave the Episcopal Church
Conservative members join a growing group of dissidents who've left the
denomination.
By Larry B. Stammer, Times Staff Writer
A third conservative Southern California parish bolted Tuesday from the national
Episcopal Church and affiliated itself with an Anglican diocese in Uganda,
further challenging the authority of the bishop of Los Angeles.
The decision by St. David's Episcopal Church in North Hollywood to leave the
2.3-million-member national church came just a week after two other parishes -
All Saints' in Long Beach and St. James in Newport Beach - took similar steps
and follows actions over the last year by other dissidents nationwide.
Including the three seceding parishes, six of the 147 parishes in the Los
Angeles diocese have joined the conservative American Anglican Council, which
argues with the Episcopal Church's biblical interpretations and views on
homosexuality. However, the rectors at St. Luke's of the Mountains in La
Crescenta and Christ the King in Santa Barbara said they did not anticipate
leaving the denomination, at least for the time being. Calls to the sixth
conservative parish, St. Jude's Church in Burbank, were not returned.
Outside California, an estimated 10 parishes have left the national church in
the last year, according to Bob Williams, a spokesman for the church. There are
7,300 parishes in the United States.
Father Jose Poch, rector of St. David's in North Hollywood, said he expected
other conservative parishes in California to also secede. But he did not
identify them.
St. David's, founded in 1931, recently affiliated with other conservative
parishes and dioceses across the country in a new Network of Anglican Communion
Dioceses and Parishes. The network hopes the archbishop of
Canterbury, the spiritual head of worldwide Anglicanism, will recognize it as a
separate province in America with its own "biblically orthodox" bishops
apart from the Episcopal Church. They would then presumably leave the
jurisdictions in Uganda and other foreign countries.
The three breakaway local parishes represent a demographic cross section: St.
James with its many well-heeled suburban parishioners, and All Saints' and St.
David's in older, more middle-class urban neighborhoods. Their worship services
also differ from each other, with All Saints' preferring the formal "high
church" liturgy and St. James offering a more informal evangelical service. But
the three have theologically conservative priests and members with conservative
social views who were upset by the elevation of a gay priest to become bishop of
New Hampshire last year.
Poch informed Los Angeles Bishop J. Jon Bruno of the secession decision in a
letter that Poch and a lay parish leader hand-delivered to the bishop Tuesday
morning. Poch, who has long been a critic of what he contends are Bruno's overly
liberal theological stances, said he told Bruno that he no longer considered him
his bishop.
All three seceding parishes have placed themselves under the jurisdiction of
Anglican Bishop Evans Kisekka of the Diocese of Luweero in Uganda. The breakaway
clergy and parishes said they remained in the worldwide Anglican Communion, of
which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch, but were no longer Episcopalians.
Poch said his meeting Tuesday with Bruno in the bishop's Echo Park office at the
Cathedral Center of St. Paul lasted about 10 to 15 minutes. "It was a
brief meeting. He asked me to pray, which I did. He also prayed, and that was
it," Poch said.
Bruno, who heads the six-county diocese, said in a prepared statement Tuesday
that he had temporarily banned Poch from priestly ministry. The bishop issued
the same order against three priests and a deacon at the two other seceding
parishes and warned them that they would be permanently defrocked and their
ordinations nullified if they did not return to the
national church. But priests at St. James and All Saints ignored Bruno's order
and showed up for Sunday services.
"As with the Long Beach and Newport Beach congregations, I have worked hard in
the past for reconciliation with this parish," Bruno said of St. David's.
Bruno said he had offered to allow a conservative Episcopal bishop with whom the
parishes agreed theologically to serve them. But the Rev. William
Thompson, rector at All Saints', said he declined the offer on behalf of all the
parishes. Thompson noted that such a visiting bishop would still be under
Bruno's jurisdiction.
Poch said he too would not follow any order from Bruno. "We feel we have done
the right thing before the Lord. We still remain Anglicans, we still remain
within the Anglican Communion," Poch said. "But we can no longer continue in
association with the American church."
St. David's board of directors, known as the vestry, voted last week 8 to 0,
with one abstention, to leave the denomination, according to Poch. Then parish
members endorsed the decision Monday night in a 68-12 vote, with four
abstentions. The parish has about 200 members and since 1953 has been in its
current building, a brick structure with dramatic stained-glass windows.
Last year, Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, primate of Uganda, preached at St.
David's Church during a Los Angeles regional conference of the American Anglican
Council. St. David's move Tuesday came one day after Orombi publicly welcomed
the other two breakaway parishes to the Ugandan church. Bishop Kisekka, who
claims jurisdiction over the three breakaway Southern
California parishes, reports to Orombi.
The Episcopal Church and the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion were
thrown into a crisis a year ago when conservatives opposed the elevation of a
gay priest to bishop, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson.
They charged that the Robinson decision and previous church stances violated
traditional understandings of biblical morality and teachings. Robinson's
supporters argued that the full acceptance of gays and lesbians - and their
committed, monogamous relationships - was essential if the church was to fully
embrace the dignity of all people, and said biblical interpretation had changed
to reject slavery and give women rights unthinkable in biblical times.
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