FROM CHURCH OF ENGLAND NEWSPAPER
Number: 5819     Date: May 12 

By George Conger

THE ANGLICAN Communion came one step closer to schism
on May 6 following an election of a new bishop in
California. The crisis came not in the much touted
election in San Francisco, where the three partnered
gay and lesbian priests lost to the suffragan Bishop
of Alabama in the election for Bishop of California,
but in the diocese of Northern California which
elected a twice divorced and thrice married priest to
be its next bishop.The Rt Rev Marc Andrus, Suffragan
Bishop of Alabama was elected on the third ballot to
succeed the Rt Rev William Swing as Bishop of
California. 

The three partnered gay and lesbian priests on the
ballot ran far back in the polling, taking the last
three spots in the voting. The election of Bishop
Andrus does not mark a swing to the right but a
preservation of the status quo in the progressive
diocese of California. 

The Rev John Kirkley, president of Oasis/California, a
gay and lesbian church advocacy group, stated Bishop
Andrus was elected “because he won our hearts and
minds during the walkabouts. His authenticity and
vulnerability indicated a man willing to stand in
solidarity with a suffering world, rooted in profound
contemplative practise.”Bishop Andrus was also
“elected with very strong support from gay and lesbian
clergy and laity,” Fr Kirkley noted. 

In an acceptance speech at Grace Cathedral in San
Francisco, Bishop Andrus, speaking with his wife
Sheila at his side, stated: “Your vote today remains a
vote for inclusion and communion — of gay and lesbian
people in their full lives as single or partnered
people, of women, of all ethnic minorities, and all
people. “My commitment to Jesus Christ’s own mission
of inclusion is resolute,” Bishop Andrus said.

Across the state that same day, the Rev Barry Beisner
was elected on the fourth ballot in succession to the
Rt Rev Jerry Lamb as Bishop of Northern California.
Appointed Canon to the Ordinary [bishop’s assistant]
to the Bishop of Northern California in 2002, Canon
Beisner has been divorced twice and married three
times. The election of Canon Beisner has caught
American conservatives off guard. While primed to
contest the possible election of a ‘gay’ bishop in
California, conservatives contacted by The Church of
England Newspaper were divided over a response to
Beisner’s election.Several conservative delegates to
General Convention told The Church of England
Newspaper they were troubled by Beisner’s election.

To have opposed Gene Robinson’s election on moral and
Scriptural grounds and not to oppose Beisner’s
election would “reek of hypocrisy” one delegate said.
While there have been over a dozen American bishops
who have been divorced and remarried, Canon Beisner
will be the first priest to have been divorced twice
and married three times before being consecrated as
bishop. 

In 1946 the Episcopal Church permitted divorcees to
remarry in the Church upon special licence of their
bishop. Clergy were generally not permitted to remarry
after divorce and retain their orders until the
1960s.The current rules for clergy remarriage after
divorce varies by diocese across the Episcopal Church
as no national church canon governs. 

The Beisner election has the potential for upsetting
the political calculus worked out among the Episcopal
Church’s fractious factions by the bishops to hold the
Church together through Lambeth 2008. Conservatives
and moderates pushing for acceptance of the
recommendations of the Windsor Report may well fall
out over the Beisner election.