Favorite Lenten hymns

After starting this blog nine years ago — with 262 posts so far — only a few mention hymns for the first five weeks of Lent. (I did previously comment on appropriate hymns for Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday).

So as I did for Advent, Christmas (in 2009, 2010, 2014 and 2015) and Easter, it seemed like a good time to provide an overview of the hymns available for Lent (including Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Good Friday).

I cross-referenced hymns from these periods from The English Hymnal (COE 1906), Hymnal 1940 (ECUSA) and Hymnal 1982 (ECUSA). I also matched the hymns from these lists to two Missouri Synod (LCMS) hymnals: The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) and Lutheran Service Book (2006).

Eleven hymn texts (twelve combinations) stood out. Because there’s such a small number, I found that I previously wrote about five of these texts.

Title	Tune	TEH	H40	H82	TLH	LSB	Remarks
Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended	Herzleibster Jesu	70	71.1 *	158	143	439	Holy Week
All glory, laud, and honor	St. Theodulph	622	62	154	160	442	Palm Sunday
Forty days and forty nights	Aus der Tiefe	73	55	150			Early Lent
Lord Jesus, think on me	Southwell	77	417	641	320	610
Lord, who throughout these forty days	St. Flavian		59			*	Early Lent
O sacred head, sore wounded	Passion Chorale	102	75	168	172	449 *	Holy Week
Ride on, ride on in majesty	The King's Majesty		64.1	156			Palm Sunday
Ride on, ride on in majesty	Winchester New	620	64.2		162	441	Palm Sunday
The glory of these forty days	Erhalt uns, Herr	68.2	61	143			Early Lent
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?	Were You There		80	172		456	Holy Week
When I survey the wondrous Cross	Rockingham	107	337	474	175.2 *	426 *	Holy Week

* Another tune available

Three of the hymns (all with “forty days” in the title) are both written and commonly used for Ash Wednesday or the first Sunday in Lent. Two (“All glory, laud, and honor” and “Ride on, ride on in majesty”) are clearly written for Palm Sunday. Four are about the passion of Christ, which could be celebrated on Lent 5 (“Passiontide” in the 28 BCP) or any time in Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday or (when hymns are used) Good Friday. And in fact, these dates are when the these hymns are assigned by Hymnal 1940: Ash Wednesday, Lent 1, Lent 5, or Palm Sunday.

“…Ride on in majesty” has two tunes: Winchester New is preferred by the CoE hymnals (dating back to the 19th century Hymns Ancient & Modern), and (the considerably more difficult) King’s Majesty which was introduced in H40 and the only one kept by H82.

This is really a list of the top hymns: there are other hymns worth mentioning that weren’t quite as popular. I hope to publish a more complete list at some point in the future.

California Christian Catechesis

The San Diego deanery (aka San Diego Anglicans) of the ACNA diocese of Western Anglican is running a Lenten class for lay leaders on six Saturday mornings.

The classes are learning to teach the catechism approved (for trial use) by ACNA bishops in January 2014. Modestly titled To Be a Christian —available for free download at the ACNA and sale at Amazon and BN.com — the new catechism is a longer and far more detailed explication of the faith than in previous editions of the US Book of Common Prayer. (More on this another time).

The short course is led Rev. Brian Hughes, assistant rector of Holy Spirit Anglican (located at Bethel’s San Diego campus). It includes a series of guest preachers:

• February 21 – Introduction to the Catechumenate and the Catechism. Instructor: Fr. Brian Hughes of Holy Spirit Anglican Church, San Diego
• February 28 – Part I: Beginning in Christ (Q 1-18), What is the Gospel? Instructor: Fr. Cameron Lemons of St. Paul’s City Church, Lake Elsinore
• March 7 – Part II: Believing in Christ (Q 19-80), the Creeds. Instructor: Fr. Brian Hughes of Holy Spirit Anglican Church, San Diego
• March 14 – Part II: Believing in Christ (Q 81-148), How to Study the Bible. Instructor: Fr. Jamal Scarlett of St. Paul’s City Church, Lake Elsinore
• March 21 – Part III: Being Christ’s (Q 149-255), A Rule of Life. Instructor: Fr. Larry Bausch of Holy Trinity Anglican Parish, Ocean Beach
• March 28 – Part IV: Behaving Christianly (Q 256-345), Accountability Structures. Instructor: Fr. Russell Martin of Christ the King Church, San Diego

The sessions run from 9-12 at Christ the King’s Scripps Ranch office. Father Hughes has already uploaded the first two videos to his YouTube channel and has created a YouTube playlist.

For more information, contact Fr. Hughes.

ECUSA litigation scorecard

The influential American Anglican attorney, A.S. Haley, on Sunday published his annual survey of ECUSA property litigation. He counts 83 cases since 2000 where ECUSA (and/or its dioceses) sued others.

He also lists 8 where ECUSA was the defendant, but in 7 of the 8, ECUSA or the diocese “ triggered the filing of a lawsuit by moving to take control of the individual church's assets”. The exception was the Pawley’s Island (S.C.) parish (successfully) suing to keep its property as part of its plan to join AMiA.

Of the 83 suits, 33.7% (28) involve California parishes. The next largest batch of litigation is the 23 lawsuits in Virginia, including the historic The Falls Church and Truro Church in suburban DC.

Nineteen of the California suits (#11-29) involve the Diocese of San Joaquin (#11) or 9 of its parishes, sued twice (#12-29). All are tied to the lawsuit against the diocese, currently (for a second time) at the state court of appeals.

The other nine lawsuits:

• St. John's (Fallbrook) #2,#5
• St. Luke's (La Crescenta) #9
• All Saints (Long Beach) #7
• St. James (Newport Beach) #6
• St. David's (North Hollywood) #8
• St. Anne's (Oceanside) #3
• St. John's (Petaluma) #10
• Holy Trinity (San Diego) #4

According to Haley, three LA-area cases (Newport Beach, North Hollywood, Long Beach) are currently on appeal, while in a fourth (La Crescenta) the Anglican parish decided not to appeal a loss. The Anglican parishes also lost (or stopped appealing) the remaining five lawsuits.

I've attended services at six of the California parishes (in their original, pre-litigation locations), and two post-litigation.

Compared to parishes where (thus far) the dioceses have left with their structure and parishes intact, the ECUSA legal tactics have succeeded in increasing the cost of leaving — deterring other parishes from doing what they know would be theologically preferable. As Haley notes, in several cases ECUSA (or its diocese) has abandoned the parish because there were not enough remaining congregants to support a parish.

California's newest Bishop

On Sunday night, Archbishop Foley Beach and others from the Anglican Church in North America consecrated its newest bishop in Newport Beach, California. The Rt. Rev. M. Keith Andrews (M. Div, D. Min) was consecrated the second bishop for the Diocese of Western Anglicans.

The Service

Rt. Rev. Keith Andrews

The service was held at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, one of 175 parishes of the ECO Presbyterian movement that broke away from the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). (Unlike the ACNA parishes, they got to keep their buildings). It was the same place where the diocese’s first bishop, Rt. Rev. Bill Thompson, was consecrated on October 31, 2009.

As recorded by Anglican TV, the service was clocked at 194 minutes from start to finish (excluding music before and after the service).

By my estimate there were about 600-700 people in the pews — of those 60+ deacons and priests — with another 60 attending in the altar party, including a 6-piece praise band and a 17-member choir that looked lost in the spacious choir benches. As with the most recent diocesan convention, the service emphasized praise music over hymns or other traditional liturgy.

The service combined the Ordinal — published in 2011 and approved by the ACNA bishops in 2013 — with the ACNA “trial use” Communion service that was launched in time for Advent 2013. The event was organized by Rev. Richard Crocker and Rev. Cathie Young — respectively the rector and associate rector of nearby St. James’ Anglican.

The Election

The diocese’ first bishop, Rt. Rev. Thompson was elected in June 2009 and resigned effective June 30, 2014. Bp. Thompson announced his resignation in August 2013 after two falls and a concussion. (In Feb. 2014, he revealed that he had since been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and the diocese’s Executive Committee would assist in the governance.)

In late 2013, the Executive Committee appointed a 12-member nominating committee to find qualified candidates. The March 2014 diocesan newsletter explained the process:

According to our Canons, the Bishop must be drawn from male Rectors in the Diocese who have at least five years’ experience, are at least 35 year old, and are not divorced and remarried. This gave us a potential pool of twenty candidates. They were each contacted, and seven agreed to put their name forward.
…
On February 8th, the four candidates still in the discernment process were announced to the full diocesan House of Delegates at its annual meeting. The candidates still in the process are:

Fr. Keith Andrews, Living Faith, Tempe, AZ
Fr. Russell Martin, Christ the King, San Diego, CA
Fr. Larry Bausch, Holy Trinity, San Diego, CA
Fr. Jose Poch, St. David’s, Burbank, CA

On March 22, the committee nominated Andrews and Martin, dropping Bausch (the most Anglo-Catholic candidate) and Poche (who was also a candidate in 2009).

In May 2014, the diocesan House of Delegates voted to nominate Andrews in hopes that the ACNA College of Bishops would elect the 2nd bishop at their June meeting. Instead, Rev. Andrews was elected bishop at their October meeting.

Bp. Thompson was directly elected by the diocese, and the 2014 requirement for ACNA approval was somewhat controversial. This shift in policy caused confusion during the ceremony, in which the text of the program was not what was spoken during the presentation of the bishop-elect (emphasis added):

The Diocesan President says
I certify that the Reverend Doctor M. Keith Andrews was duly elected nominated Bishop of the Diocese of the Western Anglicans by the clergy and lay members of the House of Delegates of the Diocese on May 10, 2014, as attested to by the minutes of the House of Delegates.

The Dean of Provincial Affairs says
I certify that the Reverend Doctor M. Keith Andrews was duly confirmed elected as Bishop of the Diocese of the Western Anglicans by the College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America on October 10,2014, as attested to by the minutes of the College.

The Consecration
I counted 12 bishops in the altar party (not including the archbishop and the bishop-elect). Note all the bishops listed in the program were present — and I didn’t recognize a couple — but here they are:

Back row: unidentified, Bp. Eric Menees, unidentified, Bp. Clark Lowenfield, Bp. Gregory Bowers. Front row: Bp. William Murdoch, Bp. John Guernsey, Bp. Bill Thompson, Bp. Todd Hunter, Bp. Frank Lyons, unidentified

The new Bishop was examined by Abp. Foley and 11 other bishops. (The bishop not participating in the examination was Bp. Gregory Bowers, representing the Los Angeles-area Jubilee Convocation that is discussing fellowship with ACNA).

At the end of the consecration, the archbishop and the other bishops engaged in the traditional laying on of hands (which the unitiated
resembled a rugby scrum without the pushing and shoving).

The consecration was followed by the presentation of four episcopal symbols from four deaneries of the diocese: Rocky Mountain (a crozier), Arizona (a ring), San Diego (a pectoral cross) and Los Angeles (his cope and mitre).

After this — and before the offertory — the congregation heard greetings from Andrews’ ecumenical partners in Arizona and the local assemblyman (with a state proclamation). A longer talk came from a priest of the North American Lutheran Church (the ELCA-splinter group) and a representative from the Diocese of Singapore.

The New Bishop

Bp. Andrews gave a brief five minute talk, thanking those responsible. While the event did only indirectly touched on his qualifications and experience, I did have a chance to hear him speak in April 2014 as one of the two final candidates.

Here some excerpts of his resume from that presentation (which I have scanned and posted to Google). His work experience:

• Senior Pastor, Living Faith Anglican Church, Tempe, AZ (2005-Present)
• Anglican Mission in the Americas Canon Missioner and Network Leader (2005-2012)
• Vicar (1985-1998) and Rector (2005), St. James Episcopal Church, Tempe, AZ
• Associate Rector, Christ Church of the Ascension, Paradise Valley, AZ (1983-1985)
• Assistant Rector, All Saints, Carmel, CA (1981-1983)

His education:

• D. Min, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2003
• M. Div., Church Divinity School of the Pacific, 1981
• M.A., Arizona State University, 1976
• B.A., Arizona State University, 1975

His dissertation, entitled “A local church paradigm that fosters renewal in mission through church multiplication,” is listed in the Fuller library as a case study of his St. James experience.

What stood out from his presentation (and what I know of the other three semi-finalists) was his successful track record in planting churches. Obviously this is a crucial imperative for the diocese and ACNA more broadly.

The Diocese

What is less clear is the bishop’s plans for the diocese (and also the constraints of the existing clergy and laity). I was told that any candidate from outside Southern California (i.e., Andrews) would be expected to relocate to Southern California (which has the greatest concentration of parishes).

When first consecrated, Bp. Thompson remained rector of All Saints (Long Beach, Calif.) but then relinquished that role in July 2012 (at the age of 66) to become a full-time bishop.

The office of bishop and the diocese have remained at All Saints since Bp. Thompson stepped down. The diocese HQ seems to have been in a holding pattern (under its interim bishop), with few updates to the website; the bimonthly newsletter hasn’t been published in 10 months.

So will the diocese remain in Long Beach? Will Bp. Andrews have another home parish? What other changes are coming? When the ECUSA formed a new diocese in San Diego in the 1970s, the first bishop used his home parish as the cathedral; the second and subsequent bishops used the largest parish in the city center as their cathedral.

The diocese of 35 parishes is hoping to convert its four deaneries to new dioceses. To do that will require significant growth in membership, parishes and pledging — something that all California Anglicans hope that the new bishop can pull off.

Update: The official ACNA press release (reprinted at Virtue Online) lists 10 of the 11 bishops (beyond Abp. Beach) involved in the consecration:

• Rt. Rev. John A.M. Guernsey, Bishop of Diocese of Mid-Atlantic
• Rt. Rev. Todd Hunter, Bishop of Diocese of Churches for Sake of Others
• Rt. Rev. Clark Lowenfield, Bishop of Diocese of Western Gulf Coast
• Rt. Rev. Frank Lyons, Assisting Bishop of Anglican Diocese of South
• Rt. Rev. Eric Menees, Bishop of Diocese of San Joaquin
• Rt. Rev. John Miller, III, Assistant Bishop of Diocese of Atlantic
• Rt. Rev. William Murdock, Bishop of Anglican Diocese of New England
• Rt. Rev. William Thompson, Retired Bishop of Diocese of Western Anglicans
• Rt. Rev. Mark Zimmerman, Bishop of Anglican Diocese of Southwest
• Rt. Rev. Derek Jones, Bishop of Armed Forces and Chaplaincy

Small victory for the Anglican diaspora

While a few of the Schism I crowd left ECUSA with their property, before the Dennis Canon, and a few parishes (and three diocese) are in court to keep the facilities they owned prior to the split — the reality is that many Schism II parishes left with only their people and a great deal of hope. These parishes have been renting other churches (off peak), schools, community centers or other meeting space. (Such rented facilities were also the norm for other new church plants for decades.)

Today St. James of San Jose completed what must have been one of the quickest ACNA journeys in the wilderness, as they celebrated their first day worshiping in their own sanctuary. The parish was formed by ECUSA refugees in March 2009 from St. Edwards, the last evangelical parish in the Diocese of El Camino Real (headed by a Nashotah House grad).

The parish spend the intervening months renting space at San Jose and Saratoga community centers, pioneering the “church in a box” weekly setup process.

The new sanctuary was formerly a small community church in Willow Glen, that had largely sat empty since its pastor retired. St. James visited the parish in Spring 2010, then forgot about it until it was offered the parish again this summer — with the owners generously selling at a price far under market.

St. James held its first two services at the parish on Sunday — the 9:00 am Rite I with hymns and the 10:30 Rite II with rock band. Having a sanctuary solves the problem of midweek services, including Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Christmas.

Five miles from their former St. Edwards home, the new location puts the ACNA back in Northern California's most populous city, as part of Father Ed McNeill's efforts to build for ACNA a Diocese of San Francisco Bay. It also allows Rev. McNeill and others to focus on planting additional ACNA parishes in Northern California, and to help those parishes gain their own permanent church facilities.

Anglo-Lutheran worship

For the first time since they processed away from their building, today I attended Holy Trinity (ACNA) in San Diego, which now worships at the LCMS parish next door to their longtime sanctuary.

As it happens, it was also the observance of feast of Pentecost, so I was able to witness their high feast worship style. It was nothing but “bells and smells” (as my choir buddies used to call it) with full incense at the most Anglo-Catholic of the Schism II parishes in San Diego. I estimate about 75 people were in the sanctuary for the 8 a.m. service.

The choice of the opening and closing hymns were about as Anglican as you can get — both with Vaughan Williams tunes from The English Hymnal: “Hail thee festival day!” (Pentecost edition) and “Come down, O love divine.”

However, the “Hail thee” was rendered in an unusual format by the Lutheran hymnals that Holy Trinity is using while temporarily meeting at Bethany Lutheran in OB. One unusual quirk is that the Lutherans decided that RVW only gets one hymn for three feast days — Easter, Ascension and Pentecost — with 3 variants specified for the chorus, verse 1 and verse 2. Without having the hymnal in front of me, it was impossible to say what damage this did to the CoE conception of the hymn.

The other change was more obvious. Instead of the PECUSA (1940, 1982):

Hail thee, festival day! blest day that are hallowed for ever;
Day whereon God from heav’n shone in† the world with his grace.

the Lutheran Book of Worship (and also the other Bethany parish hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book) render the refrain as

Hail thee, festival day! blest day to be hallowed forever;
Day when the Holy Ghost shone in the world with his grace.

(† The English Hymnal (#630) says “shown on the world” but the refrain is otherwise the same.)

The translation of the Fortunatus was attributed to the LBW, a ELCA hymnal that was rejected by the LCMS due to doctrinal errors. But the LSB translation is no better.

As far as I could tell, the other RVW hymn was divine (with words similar to those of H40 #376).

In the middle, Holy Trinity sang as its second communion hymn “O Lord, we praise you” which was unfamiliar to these Anglican ears but with a pedigree about as Lutheran as they get: verse 1 from 15th century Germany, verses 2-3 from 16th century Martin Luther hymself, and a 1524 tune from a German hymnbook.

So in the end, this was an English-American-Lutheran blended worship service — a bit unfamiliar but better than a rock band playing 19th century hymns.

An end to one Anglican tradition in San Diego

On Sunday, the parishioners of Holy Trinity (ACNA) in San Diego held their final Sunday worship service in the sanctuary (a half mile from the Pacific) that they have called home for six decades. Having surrendered their legal fight with the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, on Thursday their rector will hand over the keys to the diocese.

A brief story ran last week in the neighborhood weekly, the Peninsula Beacon. On Wednesday, the San Diego Union-Tribune is running a major feature story on this, the last Schism II church in San Diego to surrender its building. (The next to last parish, St. Anne’s of Oceanside, gave up their property a year ago.)

Attending services on both Dec. 25 and 26 at Holy Trinity was very poignant for me, and not because this was the second time I witnessed an ACNA parish surrender their building to TEC. This one was more personal, because this is the parish that my father once attended.

At both services, Fr. Lawrence Bausch, SSC made reference to the move. The Christmas service emphasized Christ coming for our eternal salvation, and thus the need to focus beyond temporary and temporal concerns. The Christmas 1 sermon highlighted some of the history of the parish, which began worship at an Ocean Beach home on Trinity Sunday 1921. (A 95-year-old parishioner attended both the first service and Sunday’s final service in their longtime sanctuary.)

Despite the sadness, it was no surprise: this move has been a long time coming. Holy Trinity (along with St. Anne’s and a third parish in Fallbrook) was first sued in 2007. Other than St. James Newport Beach, I believe all the other California churches have given up on their fights against their respective dioceses. (TEC litigation against the Diocese of San Joaquin poses different legal issues.)

I’ve followed the Holy Trinity situation intermittently over the last three years. Last summer, the vestry and then an all parish meeting decided to abandon the legal appeals and hand over the building to the TEC. As I understand it, the expenditure was certain but the benefit highly uncertain, and at this point the church leaders decided that it was time to move on (both figuratively and literally).

Unlike in Oceanside, the diocese was in no hurry to get the building back. There is a very liberal parish, All Souls, less than two miles away. There is no rump “Episcopalian” membership of Holy Trinity — the entire parish is leaving lock, stock and barrel. Unlike the other disputed properties, the diocese does not even list Holy Trinity in its church finder. Plans to hold a Jan. 9 service as the nucleus of a new congregation seem unlikely to succeed. At the same time, the Union reports that the diocese wanted $2 million to sell the building and was unwilling to rent it to Holy Trinity.

Meanwhile, the “farewell to the building” service (with about 100 people present) was the most crowded I’ve seen since the litigation began. I only recognized a handful of people, in part because (as with elsewhere in California) people have been moving to lower cost locations as the economy has soured.

As the Union article notes, the Holy Trinity faithful are moving (literally) next door to the sanctuary of a much larger LCMS parish, Bethany Lutheran. Sunday’s service concluded at Bethany with a joint prayer between Father Bausch and Pastor Steven Duescher. The combined congregations sang “The Church’s One Foundation” from the Lutheran Service Book (words by Samuel Stone, tune by S.S. Wesley).

However, in the shared space, Holy Trinity will have a less than desirable Sunday worship time: 8:00, before the home parish (10:30), Immanuel Korean Church (12:30), and a non-denominational church (5:00). The facilities (especially parking) are spacious, but the time will be a challenge over the long haul.

Fr. Bausch was called to Holy Trinity in 1979, and he fits the parish so well that it’s hard to imagine the parish with anyone else. How many Episcopal (let alone Anglican) priests are regular surfers? However, his position at Holy Trinity is perhaps a fluke, since in 1979 he was also being considered at another Anglo-Catholic parish in the diocese, St. Michael’s of Carlsbad. The rector called to St. Michael’s in 1979 retired in 1995, and his replacement was forced out earlier this year by the Bishop of San Diego. Once the largest Anglo-Catholic parish in the diocese, St. Michael’s is now destined to become a bastion of high church progressives as its Anglo-Catholic members have formed a new ACA parish, St. Augustine of Canterbury.

In some ways, however, the San Diego ACNA parishes — even without permanent facilities — seem on a more sound foundation than much of ACNA — perhaps due to the mutual support that they provide to each other. Five San Diego area parishes are among 19 in the Diocese of Western Anglicans. These five in San Diego County (population 3 million) contrast with three in Los Angeles County (population 9 million). In part, this seems a testimony to two doctrinally sound (and one decent) bishops who preceded James Mathes, keeping them in the ECUSA longer than most of the West Coast — whereas L.A. and Bay Area are home to many Schism I parishes (ACA and APCK, respectively) that formed decades due to local heresies by people like Jim Pike.

Still, any parish without a building has a long row to hoe. Holy Trinity starts with their 1928 BCP (which the diocese had no use for) but will need to rebuild most of the other assets it had accumulated over the past 90 years.

Update: Photos taken during and after Dec. 26 worship service.

Legal nonsense in California

For those who didn’t know it already, Anglican Curmudgeon has the best coverage of the California (and other US) lawsuits of TEC vs. continuing Anglicans.

Last week, the California appellate court ruled 2-1 that a decision against St. James (Newport Beach) did, in fact, settle the substantive questions. Counselor Haley explains why (as the dissenting justice noted) this is legally unprecedented.

In a later post, Counselor Haley offers 10 questions for St. James to pose in its (anticipated) appeal to the California Supreme Court.

I couldn’t say it any better — so read both posts.

San Diego scorched earth victory

David Virtue reports this week that Bishop James Mathes (TEC-San Diego) announced plans to take back St. Anne’s in Oceanside, after winning an important procedural round in November.

“Winning” the St. Anne’s property is but the latest milestone in Mathes’ scorched earth campaign against traditionalists, who — reading the writing on the wall — fled en masse beginning in 2005, even before PB Katharine Jefferts Schori and her attack dog/chancellor began their national campaign against conservative parishes.

I will leave aside the legal merits of the TEC claim to the departing parishes since Anglican Curmudgeon has been doing the best job of covering the law. However, outside the TEC, other denominations have been negotiating rather than litigating such disputes, and none has a (morally if not legally dubious) policy of favoring de-consecrating churches rather than selling them to “competing” jurisdictions (e.g. Schism I or Schism II parishes).

Despite the same national policy across the TEC, San Diego had the greatest proportion of parishes fleeing the diocese of any in California: nine of the 49 parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego had many or most of their parishioners flee with the rector to set up a new parish. Six of the nine parishes are in San Diego’s North County, the most affluent and educated suburbs of the San Diego metropolitan region.

At most of the parishes (Christ the King Alpine, All Saints’ Vista, Grace San Marcos, St. Timothy’s Peñasquitos, Holy Cross Carlsbad, St. Paul’s Yuma), those leaving the TEC left without fighting for the property. (At Holy Cross, thanks to the duplicity of the bishop selling their land without consulting them, the mission had no property to fight for.)

Three of their parishes fought for their property: St. John’s Fallbrook, St. Anne’s Oceanside and Holy Trinity Ocean Beach. After winning the first round, St. John’s lost a key appellate decision in 2008 and decided to vacate the property last March when the California Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The Anglican faithful at St. John’s surrendered the property to the much smaller group of TEC loyalists, and held the first services of the new Christ Church Fallbrook on Palm Sunday 2009.

This week’s letters by Mathes claimed victory over St. Anne’s Anglican, which this Sunday is beginning worship as Grace Anglican Church with two services at a borrowed sanctuary in Carlsbad.

Still continuing its fight is Holy Trinity, which believes it can still win its case on appeal — particularly if the US Supreme Court intervenes to reconcile conflicting state rulings. Holy Trinity has been anticipating a legal fight for years, and one of its longest serving members is the retired City Attorney of San Diego (who was for years was among 4 lay delegates in the diocese at General Convention, voting against the stupid idea du jour.) It is not clear what the EDSD would do if it won the Holy Trinity property, since it has no use for it (it is smaller than the nearby ultra-liberal All Souls) and is not allowed by KJS to sell it back to its current users.

Not leaving TEC is St. Michael’s-by-the-Sea, the onetime flagship of Anglo-Catholic traditionalism in San Diego and one of the five biggest parishes in the diocese. Established in 1894, the parish has an irreplaceable coastal property that I imagine has weighed heavily on the decision of clergy and laity to stay put in the diocese. (Given the city of Carlsbad has long resented this tax-exempt usage in a prime tourist location, I’m sure the EDSD would sell it in a heartbeat to ameliorate its own serious financial troubles.)

Today, TEC’s loss forms the backbone of the 18 congregations of the ACNA Diocese of Western Anglicans. Last Sunday, ACNA-affiliated forces opened Holy Spirit Anglican, a new congregation near San Diego State, not quite halfway between the existing Western Anglican parishes in Alpine and Ocean Beach.

I’ve attended several of these parishes in their original locations but none in their new locations. The one I’m most keen to visit is Anglican Church of the Resurrection in San Marcos, which has the most active youth choir of any Anglican church in San Diego (if not California). Last year, the choristers were among 15 choirs participating in a choir festival sponsored by the “San Diego Choristers Guild.” (I imagine readers in other cities wish they had a similar organization).

Legal troubles (and lack of permanent facilities aside), next to the Diocese of San Joaquin (which left TEC lock, stock and barrel), San Diego seems to be the most vibrant bastion of traditional Anglicanism in all of California, if not the Western United States. Let us hope these parishes can work with their new Western Anglican bishop (based in Long Beach) to build the infrastructure for communicating the faith, preserving the liturgy and (at least among the Rite I parishes) continuing a tradition of Anglo-Catholic hymnody.

Update: A.S. Haley of the Anglican Curmudgeon notes that for the first months of 2009, TEC has slashed mission spending by $1.4 million, while litigation expenses are $1.8 million over budget. In earlier postings, he raises questions about the TEC’s “hierarchical” claims to church property, the central question in lawsuits against the Anglican dioceses in Ft. Worth and San Joaquin, and reports that St. Luke’s (La Crescenta) has appealed to the US Supreme Court, asking for an application of neutral principles of property law (as in South Carolina) to the current property disputes.

San Diego wrent asunder

The latest court ruling has come in for two San Diego Anglican parishes, and — as with the recent run of news — the news was not good: both St. Anne’s (Oceanside) and Holy Trinity (Ocean Beach) have lost their cases at the Superior Court level. (Rev. Joe Rees, the new rector of St. Anne’s, issued a statement Friday, but I’ve seen no comment from Holy Trinity).

The San Diego paper has thus far ignored the story, but the Oceanside paper published a story Saturday. Former Anglican jleecbd has sympathy for the plight of these nearby parishes, but predicts — as consumers of the Anglican Fudge — they are merely deferring equally serious doctrinal issues down the road.

Bishop Mathes gloated by suggesting that the current occupants of the disputed buildings “come home,” knowing full well they won’t. He also claims to plan to rebuild the Oceanside parish as TEC outpost. However, there is no announced plan (nor any plausible plan) for reusing Holy Trinity, which — only 1.6 driving miles from All Souls (Point Loma) — has made a niche over the past 40 years by being traditional in contrast to all things trendy and progressive at All Souls.

I recall when Mathes was narrowly elected in November 2004 over Bishop Anthony Burton, the traditionalist candidate. Mathes was sold as a “moderate” but immediately began governing from the hard left. (Sound familiar, anyone). The shift from Bp. Hughes (a true moderate) to Mathes brought one of the most rapid exoduses of parishes from any TEC diocese over the past decade.

If you look at the Diocese of Western Anglicans (ACNA) congregations, six of the 22 parishes are from San Diego County — far out of proportion to the 3 million San Diegan’s share of the population of Southern California (19+ million) and Arizona (6.5 million). Not listed is St. Anne’s — I’m told that its former rector (Tony Baron) was not interested in joining ACNA, but the new rector was more open to the possibility.

Of these 7 San Diego Anglican parishes, five had already lost their buildings. No word on whether the two remaining parishes will be able to remain through Christmas in the buildings that loyal Christians paid to build and support over the past decades.

Meanwhile, the lead defendant in California — St. James Newport Beach — is continuing its case in Orange County Superior Court, despite losing a recent appeal to the US Supreme Court. (Perhaps they hope the court will recognize the legal absurdity of the TEC claim to be a hierarchical church.) No word on whether Holy Trinity (whose former warden was City Attorney of San Diego) plans to also appeal, but from Rev. Rees’ statement, it sounds like St. Anne’s plans to concede.

I’ve worshipped at three of the seven parishes, and so I know none of these decisions were ones made lightly. Instead, like parishes elsewhere in California, most (if not all) must work on building a new parish utilizing temporary facilities.

It’s possible that St. Anne’s has a favorable property alternative only a mile down the road. In 1994, fed up with the direction ECUSA was heading, St. Anne’s rector (Rev. Gary Heniser) quit the ECUSA to form Church of the Advent, a new parish of the Charismatic Episcopal Church. A few years ago, they acquired space at the old (but serviceable) Methodist church in Oceanside when that church moved across I-5 to bigger facilities. The CEC is more charismatic than Episcopal — not counted as “Anglican” by “San Diego Anglicans” — but the long ties between Father Heniser and his former flock might facilitate some sort of cooperation.

As a believer, even if all the remaining court cases go badly, I expect to see the successful rebirth of the Anglican faith in San Diego, Orange County, LA, the Central Valley and even pockets of the Bay Area. I fell sorry, however, for those in their 70s or 80s, whose last memories on this earth will be of the bitter court fights, dislocation, uncertainty and despair. Perhaps they will place their hopes in their children and grandchildren, who merely face challenges of money — not the risk of death or imprisonment in the early Christian church, or modern day China or Sudan.

California court cases still alive

A.S. Haley of the Anglican Curmudgeon has been doing the best job of following the property fights involving former ECUSA/TEC parishes, using his legal knowledge to explain in plain, logical English what each ruling means. He has special pages on the Diocese of San Joaquin and the Los Angeles parishes (although not the San Diego ones); as best I can tell, the only 21st century Bay Area defectors walked away from their property.

Today he notes a key development in the St. James (Newport Beach) case that shows that the case is very much alive, despite a January California Supreme Court ruling that brought inaccurate press coverage and bloggers who jumped to conclusions. St. James is the key case, setting precedent for at least seven parishes. In February, the California court corrected their misleading ruling, giving hope to some of the impacted parishes.

The July 13 trial court ruling keeps St. James very much alive it, and with it the hopes of a few thousand Continuing Anglicans (plus a few more that might consider leaving if the price were not so high.)

California -- less godless than New England

The Los Angeles Times (our state’s largest paper) has reported that California (20%) is less godless than New England (22%). Based on the American Religious Identification Survey, California is increasingly Catholic (37%). One factor is that nearly half the country’s Latinos live in either California or Texas.

Bay Area Anglicans: Unite!

David Virtue of Virtue Online has written up his interview with Fr. Ed McNeill, rector of the Bay Area’s new St. James Anglican. Regular Anglican Music readers already read about it here first. From what I heard, the parishioners thought that my March 8th posting captured the essence of their transition from ECUSA to the planned ACNA.

The new article also mentions NewAnglicanChurch.com, a website that St. James has created in hopes of rallying Continuing Anglicans in the Bay Area. Today it lists four parishes in the region, but Fr. McNeill is seeking other congregants and congregations to join the effort to reconnect the community lost as Episcopalians fled the church since the heresies begun by San Francisco’s own Bishop Pike.

A ray of hope in California

The January 5 victory by the TEC over Continuing Anglican parishes hoping to keep their property was widely perceived as resolving the issue once and for all. “California Supreme Court says breakaway parish can't take national church's property” blared the Los Angeles Times headline.

Based on my knowledge of the law, I was a little more cautious than most:

Since the decision sends the case back to Superior Court, St. James Anglican hopes to win in trial court, but with the Appeals and Supreme courts against them, it’s definitely an uphill fight.
…
If the California decision holds — and it will take years to say for sure — this is likely to strip real property from at least four Los Angeles and three San Diego parishes that have left since Schori was elected Presiding Bishop.

The decision, after all, was just a procedural one, not one on its merits: the California court said that the TEC has a plausible case, not that it was legally correct. Still I (and others) were struck by the sweeping rhetoric of the decision, demolishing each of the Anglican parish arguments in turn.

In fact, there was a disconnect between the stage of the legal case — a procedural decision on the Anglican parishes’ attempts to throw the case out — and the broad sweep of the rhetoric.

The Anglican Curmudgeon had the same reading of the ruling and the law, but has gone one step further. He found a Supreme Court clarification which reined in some of the sweeping rhetoric. As he summarizes:

First, note that the Court has definitively backed off from its pretense to have decided the merits of the case; instead, it has only "addressed" them---or, in the other instance, it has "analyzed" the merits instead of "resolving" them. This is a huge relief to all concerned.
…
"On this record", however, has a further technical meaning in this case, which attorneys will appreciate. For in the case of the complaint brought by ECUSA, the trial court granted the defendant parish's demurrer to it without leave to amend. (A "demurrer" to a complaint is just the same as saying: "So what if everything you say in your complaint were true? You still haven't stated a case on which the court can grant the relief for which you are asking [in this case, the transfer of the parish's property to the Diocese and to ECUSA]. And when a court "sustains", i.e., upholds, the defendant's demurrer "without leave to amend", it means that nothing the plaintiff could plead in his complaint would change the result---it would still not state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The case is then over, without the defendant ever having had to answer, because the plaintiff's case is so weak that it could not succeed even if everything the complaint says---or could conceivably say under the circumstances---were true.)

Thus in reversing the dismissal of ECUSA's complaint, the judgment of the Supreme Court has the effect of reinstating the complaint, and requiring defendants to answer it (they cannot demur to it any more). The Court has held, in effect, that if everything the Church alleges were true, then it would be entitled to the property of St. James's, Newport Beach.

I encourage all concerned Anglicans to read his complete analysis.

I would not have seen this legal update without the link from San Diego Anglicans, one of the few blogs I know that’s written about the spiritual and temporal issues facing Continuing Anglicans in California. It does a particularly good job of covering the Western Anglican Congregations, the proto-diocese for Schism II churches in Los Angeles, San Diego and Arizona.

Day of Judgement

From today’s gospel in the ECUSA (RCL) lectionary:

[Jesus] rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? —Mark 8:33b-37 (ESV)

This reading was the sermon theme for Rev. Edward McNeill, in his last day after nearly 10 years as rector of St. Edward’s Episcopal Church in the Diocese of El Camino Real (i.e. San Jose). Tomorrow, Fr. Ed becomes rector of St. James Anglican, the first Bay Area parish to leave ECUSA this decade.

As Fr. Ed noted in his sermon: “I didn’t pick the gospel: it’s in the lectionary. I did not pick this day: other people did.” As with any other resignation of a rector, at the end of the service the bishop’s representative (here Rev. Canon Brian Nordwick) took the keys to the parish. However, after the service Rev. Nordwick presented Rev. McNeill with the bishop’s letter of inhibition — which has been the TEC’s way of firing clergy who are quitting the TEC.

Following the gospel text, Fr. Ed’s theme was how we must focus our minds on the things of God, and preparing for our final judgement day. Jesus rebuked Peter because he cared more about his salvation than his feelings — or, as Fr. Ed said, “Love has teeth, and we all needed nipping once in a while.”

The surreal thing for me was that this traditional reading of scripture — and the willingness to take a stand against the errors of TEC — was delivered in the context of a very contemporary liturgy. The 12 person praise band included a drummer, keyboardist, 3 guitars, a bass and assorted singers and other instruments. Even the one traditional hymn (“It is well with my soul”) was almost unrecognizable. As the parish website proclaimed back in 2006

The structure is the same but the music is really contemporary. Now when some churches say they have contemporary music they mean music that was written in the 1960s. We like some of that music as well, but lets get real for a moment...those are golden oldies. When we say contemporary, we mean this year or even the past five years. We do occasionally sing old hymns and even golden oldies, but when we do its usually with a remix to bring it up to date. At the moment, our Music Ministry is enamored with "Jesus loves me" Punk Style! It rocks.

Although most of the praise songs were composed in this decade, they made an exception at the end. The postlude was a medley of the R&B hit “People Get Ready” with the reggae “One Love” (which has become an official hymn of the Anglican church of Jamaica).

There were about 125 people at the combined service this morning. From what I saw, about 70% of the parish is leaving with Fr. Ed to form St. James, including the majority of the vestry and 8 of the 11 regular band members (one is remaining, while the other two are paid musicians that neither parish probably can afford now). The St. Edwards majority might have hoped to keep their building, but January’s California Supreme Court ruling made that seem like a longshot. After the ruling, my sense is that they concluded that if they had to start from scratch, they might as well start sooner rather than later.

St. James will be under the supervision of Bishop Robert Duncan, head of the Anglican Communion Network and primate-apparent of the planned Anglican Church of North America. However, it is the only Schism II church in the Bay Area, and none are waiting in the wings. The only other ACN parish in the diocese (St. John’s Chapel) is in Monterey, and there are none in the Diocese of California which has had radical bishops for almost 50 years.

In Santa Clara County, there are four other (Schism I) Anglican churches in four separate Anglican jurisdictions: Christ the King South Bay, St. Luke’s Chapel (Los Altos Hills), St. Paul‘s Anglican Church (Los Altos) and St. Ann Chapel (Palo Alto). As an AMiA contemporary worship parish, CKC may join with St. James under the same bishop, but the other three parishes are 1928 BCP and solidly Anglo-Catholic. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, parishes are similarly fragmented between jurisdictions.

In the rest of California, the picture is somewhat clearer. In central California, the Diocese of San Joaquin (headed by Bp. Schofield) represents those Episcopalians who left TEC largely intact in 2007. In Southern California, the Association of Western Anglican Congregations is the proto-diocese for Schism II parishes in the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan regions. (Schism I parishes such as the APCK and TAC remain outside the group).

The faith and courage of the St. Edwards (now St. James) parishioners is undeniable. And with their belief in women’s ordination and contemporary liturgy, they will be at home with Bp. Duncan, the AMiA, and many of those in the new province.

However, I am uncertain about common cause between the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parishes in the Bay Area. Once they are done fighting TEC, their differences may be more obvious than their similarities.

An end to Schism II?

Katharine Jefferts Schori and her sidekick David Beers seem to have won a knockout blow against Schism II churches with today’s unanimous ruling by the California Supreme Court against parishes seeking to keep their property after leaving the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Since the decision sends the case back to Superior Court, St. James Anglican hopes to win in trial court, but with the Appeals and Supreme courts against them, it’s definitely an uphill fight.

The California justices seemed quite uninterested in two seemingly strong arguments. First, local donors paid to build and support the churches, effectively saying “we don’t know what their intent was so we’ll ignore that fact.” Second, that the land is titled in the name of the local churches (a sleight of hand that was called out in a concurring opinion by Joyce Kennard).

The justices relied heavily upon the infamous Denis Canon (Canon I.7.4), but perhaps without considering evidence that the Canon might have never been passed into church law. As the Anglican Curmudgeon notes, they also ignored 400 years of common law that requires both parties to assent to a change in the terms of a deed.

If the California decision holds — and it will take years to say for sure — this is likely to strip real property from at least four Los Angeles and three San Diego parishes that have left since Schori was elected Presiding Bishop. It also puts the Diocese of San Joaquin into jeopardy, assuming that 815 is allowed standing (as it was here, and contrary to 1500+ years of the bishopric) to join litigation.

More importantly, the PB and her chancellor can now deter any future parishes from leaving PECUSA. (The success of Virginia parishes is unlikely to set a precedent that influences courts in other states). Instead, individuals will leave their parishes and the empty churches will be sold to raise money to support an increasingly top-heavy hierarchy.

To me, this ruling will stall the momentum of the Schism II (i.e. the Anglican Church in North America aka Common Cause) for a decade. The endowment gifts made by good loyal Christians will accrue to the benefit of the revisionists who now control PECUSA. And the CC faithful will be scrambling to find buildings to house and maintain their existing parishes rather than planting new ones.

I wonder whether this will instead strengthen the Schism I provinces and parishes, which while small and fractured, are stable and tend to own their property. Will PECUSA refugees join established parishes rather than try to build new sanctuaries?

What does this have to do with this blog? At some point, the Continuing Anglicans will need to create a new hymnal to replace Hymnal 1940 and Hymnal 1982, if for no other reason than to stop paying money to augment KJS’ retirement fund. (We may have to start with the New English Hymnal or Hymnal 1916, since copyright on these books has expired).

If the revision is controlled by Schism II, it will have the same compromises as the 1979 prayer book and Hymnal 1982, including “inclusive” language mangling of old favorites. The TEC-sponsored Hymnal 2020 could be so beyond the pale that even the Evangelicals will recoil in horror — limiting our revisionism to 1982 rather than 2020 — but that would be a small consolation.

If, however, the revision is controlled by Schism I — perhaps augmented by FiFNA defectors from PECUSA — we may have an update to the early 20th century hymnals without incorporating the Baby Boomer and feminist “modernizations” of the culture and theology.

Don’t get me wrong. I grieve for all the time, money and energy that the Schism II faithful will have to expend over the next 20 years to get back to where they were before 2003, and pray that they somehow gain a reasonable settlement (as was once proposed in Virginia) and are able to devote their energies to saving souls from modern-day heresies.

However, I would just as soon avoid importing the PECUSA liturgical controversies (between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics) into efforts to create a New Anglican hymnal for US parishes. A more focused group of Anglo-Catholics would produce a more faithful compilation of traditional Anglican hymnody for use in the 21st century.

Preserving traditional faith and worship

Even if 16th century theologian Richard Hooker did not (as often claimed) give us the metaphor of the 3-legged stool (scripture, tradition and reason), tradition has played an important part in providing a continuity of scriptural interpretation over the millennia: most Anglicans could tell you something about what happened in the First Council of Nicaea, even if they couldn’t give you the year (325).

From the narrow prism of my personal tastes I once assumed that traditional worship and traditional liturgy (specifically music) go hand and hand. Casual observation of the unfolding American schism show that’s obviously not the case. The theological traditionalists leaving PECUSA (TEC) since the 2006 General Convention (and over the past 30 years) have included both those with modernized worship and those with traditional worship.

These two traditionalists groups seem to go by the labels “evangelical” and “Anglo-Catholic,” represented by Trinity and Nashotah seminaries, which finally realized last month that they have more similarities than differences. Similarly, of the dioceses heading for the TEC exit, Pittsburgh (Bp. Duncan) represents the evangelicals while San Joaquin (Bp. Schofield) and Ft. Worth (Bp. Iker) represent the Anglo-Catholics. The Anglo-Catholics (my homies) seem to like the 1928 BCP and the 1940 Hymnal, while the Evangelicals seem to be Rite II from the 1982 Hymnal and perhaps even non-hymnal music.

But again, this is an excessively narrow view of Anglican worship in North America. In fact, both forms of music are common on the progressive (modern theology) side of the aisle.

Most visible are the modern theology and music, a faction I’ll call “Blowin’ in the Wind,” in homage to the social gospel folk music epitomized by the Mary Travers version of the Bob Dylan song. These ultra-modernists have brought us a series of politically correct “hymnals” — even more modern and PC than Hymnal 1982:

• African-American: Lift Every Voice & Sing (1981) and Lift Every Voice & Sing II (1993)
• Feminist: Voices Found (2003)
• Other PC theology: Wonder, Love & Praise (1997)

This is also the quadrant of the most extreme cases of the TEC, as with this example recounted by David Virtue a week ago:

The Sunday after General Convention I returned to my home parish for Gay Pride Sunday and participated in a Disco Mass for which gays and lesbians turned out in force. The opening hymn was a beautiful jazz rendition of ‘Over the Rainbow.’ Musical offerings came from gay men in sequined tank tops and from the Director of Music who was ushered into the service singing a disco number complete with go-go girls. The queen of St. Mark’s appeared in full drag to deliver the homily and the closing hymn was, Sister Sledge’s ‘We Are Family.’"

At the same time, there are many high church progressives, including the majority of the participants in the Anglican Music (no relation) mailing list, a refuge for high church organists and music directors. They are often found in the big urban cathedrals in liberal dioceses, where gay rights are more salient than in the suburban churches. My first encounter with this was on a business trip many years ago to San Francisco, where I attended Church of Advent near Union Square, and found that their definition of “inclusive Anglo-Catholic” did not include traditional theology. So this actually suggests four alternatives:

		Theology
		Modern	Traditional
Liturgy	Traditional	High Church Progressives Hymnal 1982	Anglo-Catholics Hymnal 1940
	Modern	Blowin’ in the Wind Wonder, Love and Praise	Evangelicals ?

A microcosm of this 2x2 division can be found (for now) in the Diocese of El Camino Real, which installed Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves as its first female bishop two weeks ago today. The installation took place not at the small cathedral in downtown San Jose, but at St. Andrews in affluent Saratoga, which features high church worship complete with the most modern of theology. Each of these four quadrants are currently represented in the Diocese of ECR:

• High Church Progressives: epitomized by St. Andrew’s, a sanctuary (tellingly) dedicated by Bp. Pike in 1963. At the recommendation of a former parishioner, I attended a service here five years ago. Only the second rector in fifty years, his sermon talked about updating the faith for the 21st century, which should have been an an early warning sign. After he denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, I should have walked out but I was too shocked to react. Here are my contemporaneous notes of what he said:

  He said the big issue of updating the faith was the conflict between science and religion. He said we know now that rain is caused by weather systems, and diseases is caused by bacteria and the breakdown of cells. He went on: “The writers of the scriptures didn’t know that. Jesus didn’t know that.”

• Blowin’ in the Wind: this is most of TEC and I’m assuming this is most of the diocese, at least in liberal Northern California. These are services I try to avoid.
• Anglo-Catholics: St. John’s Chapel of Monterey is a 1928 BCP parish established in 1894 by C.P. Crocker and C.H. Huntington, half of the “Big Four” railroad barons who created the Central Pacific Railroad and with it the western part of the transcontinental railroad. The parish once drew heavily from Fort Ord before the base closed in 1994.
• Evangelicals: St. Edward’s in San Jose is a member of the Anglican Communion Network, with visitors from Bp. Duncan but a decidedly modern take on worship style. As the website proudly proclaimed earlier this year:

  Our 10 am Sunday service is a contemporary update of our traditional service. If you are familiar with Episcopal, Lutheran, or Roman Catholic worship, you will still recognize the pattern of the service. The structure is the same but the music is really contemporary. Now when some churches say they have contemporary music they mean music that was written in the 1960s. We like some of that music as well, but lets get real for a moment...those are golden oldies. When we say contemporary, we mean this year or even the past five years. We do occasionally sing old hymns and even golden oldies, but when we do its usually with a remix to bring it up to date. At the moment, our Music Ministry is enamored with “Jesus loves me” Punk Style! It rocks.

Without any direct evidence, I suspect that the traditionalists will not be remaining in the diocese much longer. The coverage of the installation by the San Jose Mercury and the LA Times (the latter pilloried by GetReligion) did not give much indication of the theology or administrative policies of Bp. Gray-Reeves. However, given the people who selected the bishop (and her controversial predecessor) I suspect she will be among the most liberal and aggressive in the national TEC.

If so, St. John’s and St. Edward’s will be leaving the diocese of ECR, just as most of the traditionalists left the Diocese of San Diego after it got a new liberal bishop. With California law unsettled right now, it’s not clear if they will be leaving with or without their sanctuaries, but this thin remnant of theological diversity within the diocese (and much of the TEC) is unlikely to last much longer.