On Saturday, former Glen Ellyn, Ill., priest [Matthew Gunter] was consecrated and ordained as the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, which is based in Appleton. The diocese has more than 5,700 members at 38 locations across the northeastern third of the state.
Those churches are a smorgasbord. Some are big, some small; they’re urban and rural. They’re not all economically vibrant, and perspectives vary both theologically and socially.
“But what I haven’t seen and haven’t heard is any evidence of deep divisiveness,” Gunter said. “There’s definitely disagreements about various things, but folks seem to be willing to engage one another with gentleness and reverence. I want to build on that, too, and figure out how to have conversations that might need to be had in ways that can bring us all together and move us forward together.”
Read it all from the Post-Crescent in Wisconsin.
“Gunter succeeds the Rt. Rev. Russell E. Jacobus, who retired after serving as bishop for 19 years.”
Is that the bishop Jacobus who said in 2012 that the diocese has been steadily losing about 3% membership per year and described it as being in “terminal” condition?
As you probably know, MichaelA, +Russell Jacobus is pretty conservative and has been part of the ACI-affiliated group of Communion Partner bishops. Matthew Gunter is widely considered a moderate and an irenic figure, and his track record supports that reputation. At least, by the standards of what passes for “moderation” in TEC these days. But of course, such judgments always depend on what baseline is used for comparison.
The first bishop of Fond du Lac, the great and godly Charles Grafton, would surely weep at what has happened to this diocese, that has always been small but long had a well-deserved reputation for being spiritually solid and vibrant. Grafton was one of the first three men who took solemn monastic vows as a founding member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE), the so-called “Cowley Fathers,” from thier origins in Cowley, England. As the oldest monastic group for men in Anglicanism, the SSJE was thus international from the start, and eventually established once-flourishing monasteries in South Africa and the US, as well as in England.
But alas, the SSJE in the US ended up capitulating to the fad of the pro-gay agenda. It’s been an open secret for many years that many of the men in the once distinguished order were not celibate. They had given up sex with women, but not with other men. And the notorious +Thomas Shaw, former abbot of the mother house of the SSJE in Cambridge, Mass. and then the infamously progressive bishop of Mass. illustrates the sad fact that it’s not just the fate of the Diocese of Fond du Lac (often teasingly known as “Fond of Lace” by friends and foes alike) that would grieve +Grafton. So would the even worse decay and corruption of the monastic order he helped establish. Lord, have mercy.
I wish Matthew Gunter the best. He has a pastor’s heart, and he did some outstanding pastoral work at St. Barnabas in Glen Ellyn, IL (a suburg next to Wheaton). The guy is undoubtedly right of center by the current standards of TEC. But that only shows how far gone TEC is these days.
David Handy+