When [Bishop John David] Schofield broke off from the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin around Christmas in 2007 because he opposed the denomination’s decision to appoint women as bishops and support of same-sex marriage, a handful of churches split with him.
They called themselves Anglican after the schism and claimed membership with a newly formed Fresno-based diocese led by Schofield. Church leaders deemed too liberal by Schofield within the separated diocese were slowly replaced with more conservative leaders.
St. Mark’s, though, was left in the lurch. It took more than a year for the congregation to find a priest. The instability drove away many members and took an emotional toll on those who stayed.
“A deep, dark depression settled over everyone at first,” said Carolyn Barth, 74, Marvin’s wife and a senior warden for the Anglican side of St. Mark’s. “It took a while for us to move on from that.”
In San Joaquin County, St. Ann’s in Stockton and St. Mary’s in Manteca sided with Schofield. About one-third of St. Mark’s congregation stuck with the national Episcopalian denomination, while the rest turned Anglican.
This is such poor reporting that [url=http://www.getreligion.org]GetReligion[/url] needs to be on the case!
[blockquote]a handful of churches split with him.[/blockquote]
The corrected version should read, “a handful of churches remained with TEC.”
St Anne’s in Stockton will be surprised to read that they “sided with Schofield.” Quite the opposite. It was St John’s that did so.
As others have pointed out already, a heavily biased perspective is one thing, getting the facts glaringly wrong is another. And this isn’t an editorial, it’s apparently meant to be an ordinary news report.
This could be dismissed as just a personal failure on the part of one ill-formed, sloppy journalist, if it weren’t so very common. And it’s precisely the fact that this kind of travesty, (in effect) Culture War propaganda thinly disguised as a news report, is virtually a daily occurrence somewhere in North America that makes this story revealing and significant. For it illustrates all too well the fundamental reason why this tragic and painful split occurred in the central valley of California, and is spreading throughout the western world.
And that reason is that we’re going through a sea change in our whole culture. The ignorance displayed by this reporter and her implicit hostility to the Anglican side and sympathy for the TEC side is symptomatic of the profound if gradual change all western civilization is going through as it shifts from the old Christendom kind of culture where Christianity was dominant and Church and society were assumed to be almost coterminous, to a post-Christendom, secularized, pluralistic culture. This whole battle for the soul of Anglicanism and the global north world is driven by that fateful, momentous shift. And given our state church heritage, our intentional theological vagueness, and our alliance in the past (and present) with the powers that be in this world, we Anglicans have been especially vulnerable and at risk on that score.
Of course, I don’t attribute any personal animus or overt hostility to this ignorant, careless reporter. Most likely, she is just unintentionally displaying the usual indifference of most journalists to organized religion, and the usual cynicism of reporters.
But of course, I cheerfully acknowledge that such a sweeping indictment of the profession of journalism reflects my own bias as a partisan on the conservative side of the Culture War.
David Handy+
Oops, I meant that the reporter was “ill-informed,” not badly trained.
David Handy+