Early last summer, over a period of two or three weeks, about 20 families left St. Mary’s church. Some of them joined a newly formed congregation in the conservative Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, led by one of St. Mary’s former deacons. The diocese, which serves congregants from just south of Sacramento to just south of Bakersfield, recently voted to split from the national Episcopal Church and align itself with the conservative Diocese of the Southern Cone, headquartered in South America. Other parishioners left because they were tired of the bickering and hoped to find a church where people didn’t argue over homosexuality.
“I’m not sure that you can find that place,” said Hess.
Indeed, what’s happened at St. Mary’s is happening in churches both locally and nationwide. The issue of the acceptance of homosexuality in the church is forcing believers to take sides, sometimes ripping churches in two. In some cases, entire congregations have split from their national denominations.
For the Episcopal Church, the private fight went public in 2003, when Gene Robinson was ordained as the church’s first openly gay bishop. At St. Mary’s, the outreach program and last year’s heated debate over Proposition 8 ripped open those old wounds.
I am local to this situation and this explanation of what happened at St. Mary’s is both incomplete and inaccurate. Hess follows a conservative rector, and St. Mary’s was considered to be a divided, but majority conservative parish. Hess got in, posing as a moderate who wouldn’t rock the boat, and the conservatives foolishly agreed to give him a shot (PEOPLE TAKE WARNING!!!!). After a year or so, Hess became open about supporting TEC’s pro-homosexual agenda. It had nothing to do with “welcoming gays and lesbians” to the church. I heard (through a trustworthy source) that Hess was considering pro-gay Sunday School materials and made it clear that he would perform same-sex blessings if the National Church authorized them. The conservative folks made their feelings known to Hess, who essentially told them “too bad, so sad.”
And so the folks left St. Mary’s to join an existing plant in the Diocese of San Joaquin in the town of Lodi, which is about 25 minutes south of Elk Grove, where St. Mary’s is located. The reason for the Diocese of San Joaquin planting a church in the town of Lodi is because the old Diocese of San Joaquin parish (St. John the Baptist) left the Diocese to join KJS’s new diocese.
St. Mary’s, Elk Grove was financially struggling before this departure (it is hoping to move to a new building) and from what I heard, this loss really hurt them because the departing folks were good pledgers. My guess is that St. Mary’s, Elk Grove will become yet another TEC parish that is just barely financially soluble, yet unable to attract many new converts to TEC’s new religion.