A painful split in Attleboro
ALL SAINTS CHURCH is a fine old building near the heart of Attleboro, but lately it's seen plenty of turmoil.
Long affiliated with the US Episcopal Church, the congregation changed its name to All Saints Anglican in the fall, and it joined with traditionalists who have broken with the Episcopal Church hierarchy's leadership on doctrinal matters and on homosexuality and other hot-button issues. Not long into the new year, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts evicted the congregation. Many members decamped, along with the Rev. Lance Giuffrida, to the basement of the Fisher College building in North Attleborough. But many longtime members stayed, joined by others who had left All Saints Episcopal during the Rev. Giuffrida's tenure there. Since then, both congregations have been taking stock and working to regroup.
If society is to reach some kind of understanding on the philosophical questions that divide us, much of the hard work will happen in houses of worship. In Massachusetts as in the rest of the country, Christian conservatives lead the opposition to same-sex marriage and legalized abortion. A chasm has opened between secular society and the places where many profess their faith. Until it narrows, in one way or another, the social debates will rage on and on and on.
Despite its white-shoe image, the Episcopal Church, the American offspring of the Church of England, has come to be seen as one of the nation's more liberal denominations on social issues. Some dioceses have celebrated same-sex unions, for instance, and an openly gay man was chosen as bishop of New Hampshire in 2004. Yet support for such moves is far from unanimous; All Saints Anglican is one of dozens of churches that have ended their affiliation with the Episcopal Church and instead joined the Anglican Mission in America, under the supervision of a conservative bishop in Rwanda. The North Attleborough congregation's website links to Focus on the Family, a powerful Colorado-based group that has led efforts to pass a national constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
On one recent Sunday, the two congregations' services revealed profound differences in style that only reinforce the distance between the two groups. Neither congregation's service dealt with political or social issues. At All Saints Anglican, the dress code was relatively informal, and the approach was highly personal. The Rev. Giuffrida turned the floor over to a smiling member of the laity; "Miss Nancy," he said, "has heard from God." She offered a lively, often humorous testament to the basic integrity of a person's identity. "Who you are is very good and is crowned by God," she said. "If you're a kumquat, you can only be a kumquat."
As it happened, the Rev. Bill Underhill made a related point that same morning as interim priest at All Saints Episcopal. No kumquats for him, though; he used less casual language as he discussed church members' identity as children of God. It is hard to imagine the stately Episcopal service taking place in a makeshift meeting room in a college basement. Amid the present theological debate, one irony is that the North Attleborough congregation affiliated with the conservative Anglican Mission, which hews to a more literal reading of Scripture, can have a less tradition-bound service than that of All Saints Episcopal, which is part of a more liberal denomination.
The Attleboro service was also noteworthy because it marked the return of two women -- a married couple -- who had found another church because they felt less and less at home at All Saints in the years leading to the split. (The couple weren't sure where they'd end up but wanted to take another look at their old parish.)
Yet while the split drew some former church members, other consequences were less fortuitous. It all but emptied out the Sunday school at the Attleboro church. While the Episcopal congregation ended up in the building, the Anglican congregation kept the phone number.
The split also divided some family members who had worshiped in the same place for years. All Saints Episcopal member Karen Brousseau noted that her stepson and his young family had opted to follow Father Lance to the North Attleborough congregation. Whether each congregation can thrive without the families that now belong to the other is an open question.
In an interview after the service, Rev. Underhill didn't venture a guess about when or how the two sides might reconcile. "It's hard to know," he says. "The church has weathered storms like this for 2,000 years." And at this point, papering over the differences between the two congregations seems highly unlikely. Some All Saints Anglican members have placed a defiant sticker on their bumpers: "Episcopalians are keeping the building. We are keeping the faith."
To the extent that the Episcopal community is divided over marriage rights, it is only a microcosm of American society as a whole. But, in contrast with politics, communities built on shared belief can't readily agree to disagree. It's easy to forget the toll that these disputes take upon individual congregations -- and denominations as a whole. Maybe the split in Attleboro was bound to happen. But the sense of loss is palpable. 