For Episcopal Church, fissure deepens
Priest, flock to align with African group
In a dramatic illustration of the unhappiness among conservative Episcopalians in the United States, an Episcopal priest from the North Shore has decided to become a bishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya.
The Rev. William L. Murdoch, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in West Newbury, will fly to Nairobi next month for his consecration as a Kenyan bishop, then return to Massachusetts to minister to other disaffected conservatives who are leaving the Episcopal Church over its 2003 decision to ordain an openly gay priest as the bishop of New Hampshire.
Murdoch's congregation, which averages about 300 worshipers each Sunday, will have to turn over its three buildings and a $1 million endowment to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The congregation is planning to buy a closed Catholic church in Amesbury and start over as All Saints Anglican, a local parish of the Kenyan church.
The extraordinary act is part of a new national movement, in which a handful of Episcopal parishes and priests are leaving the 2-million-member Episcopal Church USA and affiliating with the more conservative Anglican churches, called provinces, of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda.
To the dismay of the Episcopal Church, the African provinces are now developing church organizations in the United States to reach out to those looking for an alternative.
The Episcopal Church is at odds with much of the rest of the Anglican Communion over its support of gay rights and is facing possible sanctions.
In the United States, the Anglican Communion Network, a national alliance of conservative Episcopalians, estimates that 250 congregations have left the Episcopal Church since the election of V. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop; the Episcopal Church says that number is lower.
Among those that have joined African provinces are an Attleboro congregation, which has affiliated with the Anglican province of Rwanda, and two Cape Cod worship groups that have signed on with Kenya but are so conservative they were never part of the Episcopal Church.
Most churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, which reports 77,000 adherents in 194 congregations in Eastern Massachusetts, are expected to remain in place.
The diocese is one of the most liberal in the country and has been a leader in advocacy of women's rights and gay rights within the Episcopal Church.
Murdoch, 58, had never been to Kenya before he flew there for a series of interviews last month. He has been rector of the West Newbury church since 1993, and since 2004 he has been the regional dean of the Anglican Communion Network.
Murdoch and another American priest, the Rev. Will G. Atwood III of Texas, will be the first American Episcopalians ordained as bishops in the Kenyan province. In May, the archbishop of Nigeria flew to Virginia to install a priest there as a bishop of that province; in September a Virginia priest is scheduled to be ordained a bishop in Uganda.
"We feel the need to separate from the Episcopal Church because of the crisis brought about with the election of a noncelibate gay bishop," Murdoch said in a telephone interview yesterday. "It blesses what Scripture condemns as sin, and it changes so many thousand years of Judeo-Christian history in which the church has said no to affirmation of homosexual behavior and lifestyle as an alternative to that which God and the church has created and blessed."
Murdoch said that in recent years the Episcopal Church has "become even more clear in its stance to remain committed to full support of the gay agenda, over and against the wishes of the global Anglican Communion to affirm traditional doctrine, and out of that larger issues have grown about the Episcopal Church's view of Christ and his saving work and the singular nature of that."
Murdoch's congregation has become a magnet for disenchanted Episcopalians from several states. His last service in West Newbury is scheduled for Aug. 19. Once he leaves, the Episcopal Diocese plans to consult with other Merrimack Valley Episcopalians over whether to try to establish a new congregation in the town.
In a remarkable development, with little precedent nationally, the Episcopal diocese and Murdoch have so far negotiated his departure without acrimony.
Previous departures have been divisive. In Attleboro, the diocese is suing its former parishioners over the handling of church assets, and similar lawsuits have been filed around the country.
In an interview yesterday, M. Thomas Shaw, the bishop for Eastern Massachusetts, insisted, "I would prefer if they would stay."
"While I respect his concern about issues of theology and authority in the church and while I respect his right to go in this particular path, I regret the fact that Bill and his congregation don't feel as though they can be part of a discussion about theology and issues in the Episcopal Church in the future," Shaw said.
He is one of the more liberal Episcopal bishops but has worked to get along with the conservative minority in the Massachusetts diocese.
Shaw said that he has no regrets about voting to endorse the election of Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire and that he is "more confident than I've ever been" in the overall direction of the Episcopal Church.
He also rejected concerns that the Episcopal Church has lost its way theologically or morally.
"I don't think morality is simply about what goes on in the lower half of a person's body, and I don't think the New Testament talks about it like that," he said.
"The Episcopal Church is taking an incredible moral stance fighting poverty in the world, in some quite profound ways, and locally we have the strongest antiviolence program of any denomination in the Boston area for kids," Shaw said.
He does not expect other local congregations to leave, the bishop said, adding that he believes that the number of local Episcopalians who would leave to join an African province over theological disagreements is very low.
In the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, with 67 congregations and about 19,000 members, no congregations or priests have affiliated with African provinces.
"We are working very hard to stay in relationship with our more conservative parishes, and we've been successful in making folks understand that we want them in the Episcopal Church," said a diocesan official, the Rev. Sarah Shofstall. "The Episcopal Church is not trying to get rid of conservatives."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com. 