NEWS STORY: Griswold installed as new Presiding Bishop of Episcopal Church

c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ In a ceremony marked by pageantry, praise and prayer, Bishop Frank Griswold III was installed Saturday (Jan 10) to a nine-year term as the 25th Presiding Bishop of the faction-riven 2.5 million-member Episcopal Church. During the pomp-filled celebration at the massive Gothic-style National Cathedral _ formally known as […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ In a ceremony marked by pageantry, praise and prayer, Bishop Frank Griswold III was installed Saturday (Jan 10) to a nine-year term as the 25th Presiding Bishop of the faction-riven 2.5 million-member Episcopal Church.

During the pomp-filled celebration at the massive Gothic-style National Cathedral _ formally known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul _ the smell of incense mingled with the sound of Native American drummers, classic trumpet fanfares and liturgical music from Africa as well as hymns in English and Spanish.


At the center of the two-and-a-half ceremony, the 60-year-old Griswold, addressing a capacity crowd packed into the ornate cathedral as well Episcopalians and others linked by television at dozens of other sites across the nation, called on the schism-wracked denomination to repair itself based on the venerable Anglican traditions of compromise and tolerance.”What does it mean to rebuild the Church?”he asked.”There are, of course, many possible answers.”What has become clear to me is that the Church is not an object or an institution to be fixed or a building to be repaired. … Instead, the Church is a relationship to be lived … As such, the Church is always, in every age, being rebuilt and reformed out of the struggles and witness and compromised fidelity of its members. The same is true now and the same will true at the end of nine years,”he said.

Griswold, elected at the denomination’s General Convention last summer, succeeds Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning as the top cleric in the church.

He takes the helm of the beleaguered denomination after it has been through a half decade of financial scandal, divisive debate between traditionalists and liberals and threatened division marked most prominently by decades-old but continuing differences over the ordination of women and, now, the volatile issue of the ordination of gays and the blessing of same-sex unions.

The latest salvo in the traditionalist-liberal struggle occurred in recent weeks when it was revealed traditionalist bishops have incorporated the church’s previously unincorporated name and flag in hopes of creating a haven for those disenchanted with the leftward drift of the church.

Griswold did not directly refer to any of the specific questions that embroil the church but, rather, urged his listeners recover the”graced pragmatism”of the Anglican tradition to which the U.S. Episcopal Church belongs and which has given the church”a unique capacity for diversity and the ability to discern and welcome truth in its various forms.” But on Friday (Jan. 9), at a Washington news conference, Griswold indicated he will take the first step toward healing differences with traditionalists by seeking a meeting with Bishop William Wantland of the Diocese of Eau Claire, Wis.

Wantland, a leading conservative, is the bishop who incorporated the church’s official name and flag in hopes of developing a new, non-geographic jurisdiction which conservative congregations wishing to opt out of what they consider their liberal dioceses may join.

On Saturday, however, the denomination paused Saturday in its internecine warfare as dozens of scarlet-robed prelates joined the capacity congregation in officially seating the presiding bishop. While the presiding bishop lives in New York, where church headquarters are, the National Cathedral is where the head prelates are officially seated.


Griswold’s installation itself symbolized the diversity of which he spoke. Symbols of the Presiding Bishops office and the church’s long-standing commitment to ecumenism were presented by church leaders and representatives from Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Islamic and Jewish traditions.

A group of five Native Americans drummers opened the service as the bishops processed through the cathedral’s massive Great Hall. Three choirs sang a mixture of traditional and gospel hymns, including one that infused a jazz accompaniment by a muted trumpet.

In his sermon, Griswold touched on the theme of the service _ the renewal of baptismal vows _ by saying baptism grafts people in communion to Jesus, like arms to a body.”This communion, this spiritual fellowship, also makes us permeable to truth: Truth which is discovered in a living way through the sharing of the truth,”he said.”Communion is realized only through a costly and excruciating process of conversion and a radical transformation of consciousness.”

In such a renewal, Griswold “your truth and my truth address one another and give room to one another.”

He said he is”immensely hopeful”because of what appears to be a “deep desire on all sides to move beyond threat and accusation to a place of conversation, conversion, communion and truth.

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