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FROM THE BISHOP

Hope instead of despair

April 18, 2005

Last night I was present as the final votes from Christ Church were tabulated. As you already will have read, some 80 percent of those who voted did so for the negotiated settlement that will take Christ Church out of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas and will remove them from the Anglican Communion.

It was a sad moment for many of us, and the right words are hard to find.

While 80 percent was a clear majority, it still meant that nearly one in five people of the remaining, qualified voters at Christ Church voted not to leave the Episcopal Church! And this didn’t include the hundreds of people who already had left Christ Church over the past several years and were, therefore, ineligible to vote.

In the days and months ahead we will be working diligently to care for these brave and faithful Christians who wish to remain loyal to the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal parishes in surrounding Johnson and Wyandotte counties have made it clear that their doors are open to them.

But right now that may be of little comfort to many members of this faithful remnant.

These are people who feel their church has been taken from them. They feel they have been betrayed by their clergy and lay leaders. They are in a grief process that will take time and must be respected.

Some of them have relatives whose remains are interred in the columbarium at Christ Church. Some of them have had children baptized and married in that church. Nearly all of them have given sacrificially of their time, tithe and talents in the building up of Christ Church, and so their sense of loss is profound. We need to continue to be aware of their tears and their heartache as we lift up our prayers around this diocese.

This voting process was like many recent elections. It involved erroneous and misleading information and included e-mails that were threatening and fear-based. It included personal attacks that questioned the faith of the current bishop and that of previous bishops in this diocese and beyond. It included questions regarding the eligibility of voters and, it involved the news media in ways that served to bring more heat than light to the situation.

The process itself revealed the deep divide which exists between the current leadership at Christ Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas.

In reflecting on all of this I was reminded of the words of Saint Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture – ‘I believed, and so I spoke’ — we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.”

As Christians, we believe life triumphs over death, and so all that we do, we do in the hope of the risen Lord. This hope can never be taken from us. We are Resurrection people.

We believe, in the most difficult of circumstances, that the Spirit of God is fully present. This loss is a cause for deep disappointment, but we are not driven to despair.

In this matter, we have nothing of which to be ashamed. We have conducted ourselves in accordance with the highest principals and have operated carefully within the canons and constitution of the Church. We have been transparent in our intentions.  And we have remained resolutely faithful to our baptismal and ordination vows. I believe, with all my heart, that such obedience will not go unrewarded.

In the Name of Our Risen Lord,

+Dean

The Right Reverend Dean E. Wolfe

IX Bishop, the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas

Note: This first appeared as Bishop Wolfe's column in the March/April issue of The Harvest, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas.