Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long
But Bishop Frank Vest of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia is resisting the pressure as the 2.5 million-member U.S. denomination prepares to debate the issue of gay clergy at its General Convention in Indianapolis.
``You're going to see a schism in the church,'' said Kenneth T. Decker Sr., a vestryman at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Norfolk and organizer of a group called Concerned Episcopalians.
Decker has gone as far as accusing Vest of incompetence as a church leader and of being evasive when questioned about the ordination issue at a Bishop's Day meeting in March with vestries from throughout the diocese.
``The final decision [on candidates for the ministry] is yours, and yours alone,'' Decker wrote in a May 24 letter to Vest. ``Will you offer solace, forgiveness and a chance to repent to the afflicted homosexual seeking God? Or will you ... disregard Holy Scripture, morality and decency by ordaining the wretched?''
Vest, 58, has been bishop of the diocese since 1991. He did not return several calls made by The Associated Press to his Norfolk office.
The bishop's supporters said the complex procedure that a person seeking ordination has to undergo makes it unlikely that a homosexual would pursue the church's ministry, although gays have been ordained in other dioceses.
``Being an ordained person puts you too much in the glare of society,'' said the Rev. Ross F. Keener Jr., rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in Newport News. ``I wouldn't tell someone I knew was an active homosexual they should be ordained.''
A candidate for the ministry begins by getting the recommendation of the rector and vestry of his own church before being considered by a commission of clergymen and lay leaders in the diocese. And that is just to get into a seminary, which lasts several years.
The bishop's approval is the final step.
``This is not an overnight process,'' Keener said. ``I think they're looking for a scapegoat to dump all their homophobic fears on. I think it's an irrational fear on their part.''
Keener said he attended the same Bishop's Day session as Decker but didn't get the impression that Vest was throwing open the ministry's doors to homosexuals.
``I heard the bishop uphold the teachings of this church, which basically are that homosexuality is a sin but that the homosexual is not the outcast of society that Mr. Decker apparently would have him made,'' the rector said.
Atwood C. Cherry, the senior warden at Keener's church, said Vest believes God's love can transcend a person's sexual behavior. He said it's wrong for Decker's group to try to push the bishop on the ordination question.
``If a person has been called in the service of God, who am I to ask whether they are homosexual or not?'' he said. ``I'm not even going to ask.''
Decker's Concerned Episcopalians group is small. About 35 people, including five clergymen, met last month to discuss their differences with the bishop.
But Decker said he has received an increasing number of letters of support from throughout the diocese, even though some rectors and vestry leaders haven't been sharing letters that his group has sent to every parish.
``If the word was out to the grass-roots Episcopalians who so far have been sheltered from the bishop's stand, the outcry would rival the horns of Joshua's time, and the walls of the diocese would come down,'' he said.
Vest wrote a letter to Decker six weeks ago suggesting ``a face-to-face conversation,'' but such a meeting never was arranged, Decker said.
Vest's 36,300-member diocese stretches from Richmond to Danville to the Eastern Shore.
As a bishop, Vest will vote at the General Convention on a proposed statement of sexuality that calls for ordaining ``only persons we believe to be a `wholesome example' to their people, according to the standards and norms set forth by the church's teaching.''
J. Nelson Happy, a member of St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton and dean of the law school at Regent University in Virginia Beach, said the Concerned Episcopalians want a reformation within the church that will restore the values that many of them grew up with.
For the past 20 years, Happy said, homosexuals have been targeting the church by entering its seminaries without revealing themselves. Now, he said, gay interests are actively promoted within the church, and as a result many members have left for splinter Episcopal groups or other denominations.
``I don't think a family can be held together in an environment in which the role model in a priest or minister is a practicing homosexual,'' said Happy, who attended the dissidents' meeting last month.
``That doesn't say, from a Christian perspective, one shouldn't love a homosexual. But I don't think they should be put in the position of priest.''
But Cherry said there still are some churches in the diocese that don't think women should be ordained. ``There's a lot of closed-mindedness and tunnel vision within all denominations, I guess,'' he said.
by CNB