Split on gay bishop, parish seeks healing

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- No longer able to tolerate what they saw as bitterness and backbiting inside the sunny wooden sanctuary of the Church of the Redeemer, Anne and Stephen Whitney made the painful decision to stop attending services there about two months ago.

It was a long and sad exile from the humble brick church where the Whitneys, retirees in their 70s, were married 15 years ago, and where they had hoped to pray in peace for years to come.

"I've been wanting to come back so badly, but I couldn't when the other people here wouldn't accept Gene Robinson," Anne Whitney said. "It was too difficult. They were too dogmatic, and it just didn't work."

Unable to bridge the differences among its members over the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church USA, the Redeemer split in two last week and left this working-class city of 29,000 on New Hampshire's seacoast straddling a global religious divide.

Congregations from London to Anchorage have debated the election of Robinson and its meaning for the church. Some see his elevation as a renunciation of church teachings; others see it as a sign of progress.

Perhaps nowhere in the 49-parish diocese of New Hampshire, which Robinson oversees, has the debate been more passionately, and at times, bitterly debated than in the Redeemer. Finally last week, 36 of the church's 39 parishioners, including all 10 members of the vestry who control the church's business affairs, voted to walk out and form their own community, leaving just three active members of the Redeemer.

Distraught by the breakup, Robinson and his associates hope to rebuild the church and increase its membership from among the ranks of the disaffected and unaffiliated in New Hampshire. If Robinson is to succeed, he will need the support of parishioners like the Whitneys and others willing to return and rediscover the church.

Whitney said she is delighted to be back. "I'm rejoicing," she said. "I'm with my friends. We have our life beliefs, and we like Gene Robinson. It's like I'm home again."

She was among the 80 or so worshipers, including Roman Catholics and Episcopalians from other congregations, who filled the church's pews yesterday in the first service since the schism. The service was led by the Rev. Timothy Rich, an assistant to Robinson, who proclaimed, "Today, you people of the Redeemer in Rochester, begin anew.

"Today, your resurrection begins," Rich said. "You have a chance to write the next chapter of the Redeemer. In fact, we all do."

Parishioners responded to Rich's request for an "Amen" by erupting in applause. And when Rich asked members of the Redeemer to stand from among the many visitors, about a dozen rose to their feet.

In the 1970s, when the Episcopal Church began ordaining women and rewrote the central prayer book, some members of the Redeemer also rebelled. But Denise Grady, a preschool teacher and Roman Catholic who traveled from Londonderry to support the Redeemer, said worshipers, regardless of faith, should not be affected by earthly conflict.

"Religion is religion," she said. "There's nothing else involved in that except worshiping God."

About 4 miles away, a separate service in Grace Baptist Church in East Rochester welcomed the parishioners opposed to Robinson's ministry.

Lisa Ball, a 44-year-old child advocate and counselor who left the Redeemer last week, said she had repeatedly beseeched Robinson to step down, renounce his homosexuality, or appoint an interim leader for the congregation.

"You know, he could have done the right thing," she said. Still, Ball said she had no regrets about her decision to leave a church she had worshiped in for years and borrow a new sanctuary from another denomination.

Both sides seemed to agree that the religious split has inflicted deep personal wounds in the community.

"It's been terrible. It's ripped friends apart, family apart; it's ripped us to the core," Ball said.

Robinson, who attended the Redeemer service, said he was hopeful for the future.

"You can't force anyone or manipulate anyone into loving the family of Christ, but I'm going to keep putting that message out. These people are welcomed back any time they want," he said.