The continuing diocese of the Episcopal Church in Forth Worth was reconstituted in February 2009 and is now led by Provisional Bishop The Right Rev. Edwin F. Gulick, Jr., Bishop of Kentucky. As a Bishop, Gulick already is a Trustee of the University; Kent Henning also is a Trustee from the continuing Ft. Worth Diocese and will continue in his appointment.
The Committee on Credentials recommended to the full Board that only the Trustees elected by the continuing Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth be seated on the University board.
“This action by the Board was carefully studied over a period of months and is consistent with the governance of the University as mandated by the Constitution and By-Laws,” Chancellor Parsley said.
The Constitution states that the University “must in all parts be under the sole and perpetual control of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America,” and represented in part by Trustees elected by the 28 dioceses that comprise the owning dioceses.
I know a member of this board and I know they struggled with the question of whether Trustees who are now in the Southern Cone Diocese of Ft. Worth were eligible to continue to serve on the board. It seems to me that they came to the only appropriate conclusion, since Sewanee is after all an Episcopal institution.