TOP STORY: THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH: Heresy trial could be dividing line for Episcopalians

c. 1996 Religion News Service NEWARK, N.J. (RNS)-The Rev. Barry Stopfel, rector of St. George’s Church in Maplewood, N.J., a Newark suburb, opens his packages cautiously these days. He worries that his address is in the phone book and that his car is too accessible. He hopes his fears are unfounded, but given the quality […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

NEWARK, N.J. (RNS)-The Rev. Barry Stopfel, rector of St. George’s Church in Maplewood, N.J., a Newark suburb, opens his packages cautiously these days. He worries that his address is in the phone book and that his car is too accessible. He hopes his fears are unfounded, but given the quality of his hate mail, he says he can’t afford to relax.

“It’s the usual stuff-`scourge of God,’ `crime against nature’ and all that-but recently a friend from San Diego called and suggested I should watch my packages and lock the car,” Stopfel explained.


“You don’t want to overreact. But the fact is we live in a time when people do violence in the name of God.”

Stopfel, 48, is a pariah in some quarters, not just because he is a homosexual but because he is an openly gay man who was ordained an Episcopal priest.

Stopfel’s 1990 ordination in a Tenafly, N.J., church has set off a storm of protest among a small but aggressive conservative group of bishops that will culminate with the opening next week of the initial phase of the Episcopal Church’s first heresy trial since 1924.

The case has become a flash point in the larger debate raging within the Episcopal Church over homosexuality. It also has drawn attention to the church at a time when Episcopalians are reeling from other controversies, including a high-profile embezzlement case involving a former treasurer of the national church.

Facing heresy charges is Walter Righter, 72, the retired bishop who ordained Stopfel as a deacon. Righter acted at the request of Newark Bishop John S. Spong, who ordained Stopfel as a priest a year later.

Righter is only the second bishop to stand accused of heresy in the 206-year history of the church, but the conservatives say they have targeted several other clergy, including Spong.

As Feb. 27, the date for the ecclesiastical trial in Wilmington, Del. nears, tensions are mounting in the 2.5 million-member church. Some parishes have threatened to withhold payments to the national church. Hate mail is on the rise. Court documents, originally limited to scholarly theological issues in the case, have become increasingly shrill and melodramatic.


Last week, a final brief submitted on behalf of the 10 bishops who filed the heresy charge was denounced by the defense lawyer as a “salacious and scurrilous attempt to inflame the public and prejudice the court.”

“The presenters (accusing bishops) have engaged in an outrageous and vicious appeal to stereotypical homophobic prejudice through the continual use of misrepresentations, miscitations, misquotations and intentionally misleading and inflammatory language,” Newark Diocese chancellor Michael Rehill, a Westwood, N.J., attorney who is defending Righter, said in court papers filed Friday (Feb. 16).

Rehill charged that the brief, filed by A. Hugo Blankenship Jr., the retired chancellor of the Diocese of Virginia, “implies that anyone sympathetic to the ordinance of noncelibate homosexual persons is also in favor of gang rape.

“The presenters have interchangeably used the terms `pederasty,’ `uncontrolled desire’ and `sexual violations,’ and `pedophilia’ to describe the presenters’ grotesque concept of `homosexual practices,’ ” Rehill said in a motion to have the brief stricken.

Blankenship did not return calls requesting comment on the brief. But a letter published last month in the Central Florida Episcopalian, the church newspaper in the diocese of John W. Howe, one of the 10 accusing bishops Blankenship represents, suggests that the heresy debate is moving away from the question of whether Righter violated doctrine-the key issue defined by the court-and into the more inflammatory issue of the morality of homosexuality.

Accompanied by a strong endorsement by Bishop Keith Ackerman, another of Righter’s accusers from Quincy, Mass., the anonymous letter claims its author spent “several years involved with the homosexual subculture … (where) I experienced more depravity and godless living than men many times my age.”


The author further claims homosexuality is “learned” behavior that can be overcome and that “… for the Church to embrace this sin is a grave crime against our most holy and just God.”

In an interview in the same issue, Howe says that if Righter is found innocent, it would be “spiritually disastrous.” His diocesan board has already passed a resolution announcing it will “reconsider or rescind our pledge” of financial support to the national church budget.

Spong, a prolific author who has been a public thorn in the sides of church conservatives for decades, denounced his opponents’ tactics.

“We’d be the first to condemn any kind of predatory, non-consensual or promiscuous sex. But everyone knows that is absolutely not the issue here,” Spong said.

“Barry Stopfel is in a loving, monogamous relationship and in all other ways suitable for ordination. To suggest otherwise is a vicious lie,” Spong said. “And to suggest withholding pledges from the national church if the verdict is not what you want is plain blackmail.”

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Spong, in his annual address to the diocese convention in late January, noted that recent events in the church have been “near disastrous.”


Citing the case against Righter, Spong said: “This strange, hostile and arrogant action has once again thrown the church in general, and this diocese in particular, into great pain.

“If this evil action succeeds, the church as we know it will surely die,” Spong said. “A church cannot be exclusive, racist, chauvinist or homophobic and still be the body of Christ.”

Spong, who said he is not attending the trial “because I’ve got better things to do,” considers the charges against Righter “nothing more than harassment” by conservatives who have been repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to formally ban homosexuals from the clergy.

The result is a 1979 church resolution that says the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals is “not appropriate.” The essence of the heresy case is whether or not that resolution is a recommendation or a binding church doctrine.

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Some have questioned why Righter was the target when it was Spong-already under attack for ordaining a gay man the year before-who asked him to do it.

“Actually my publishers would love it if I were named in a juicy heresy trial,” Spong commented. “But I am too much of a lightning rod for controversy; this should be about the issue, not the person.


“Besides, Walter Righter has a mind of his own.”

A gray-haired grandfather who considers “the cost of a trial an abomination,” Righter hotly contests any hint that he was manipulated by Spong.

“I made this decision. I stand by it and I will fight for it, because it is the right thing to do,” he said.

At worst, conviction means that Righter would be deposed, an action that used to be called defrocked. He would not lose his pension or benefits, and would not be banned from the church.

Both Spong and Righter say the case is largely a philosophical debate, but for Stopfel, it is much more personal.

“It’s not easy being an icon. It has put a tremendous stress on my relationship,” with longtime partner Will Lecki, a hospice chaplain.

Stopfel talked about the immense difficulty of keeping his parish on an even keel “and not letting this parish be just about Barry Stopfel. The good part is that 30 percent of this parish is gay or lesbian. They understand.


“I think most of my people will stay with the church, whatever happens, but they are mad as hell that part of their pledges goes to this tremendous squandering of money by the national church.

“Doesn’t the church have a better mission for its money, like helping the sick or feeding the poor?”

A panel of nine judges, loosely following the federal rules of civil procedure, will decide the case. They are slated to hear oral arguments only from attorneys in this phase of the trial, to determine if doctrine has, in fact, been violated.

If the judges rule it has, Righter faces the second phase of the trial in May, in which he is allowed to call witnesses in his defense. Rehill has vowed to call every one of 230 bishops in the church.

He said the judges could have avoided a trial by deciding at any time on the doctrinal issue, saving a lot of embarassing publicity.

The judges wouldn’t comment on their reasons for going ahead with the trial, but Rehill suggested one answer: “I have the sense that people need this.


“They need the ritual to preserve the appearance that this is not a whitewash and it is not an idle decision.”

MJP END PEET

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