NORTH DAKOTA: Orthodox Bishop Denies License to Lesbian Priest
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
3/25/2008
The Evangelical Anglo-Catholic Bishop of North Dakota, the Rt. Rev. Michael Smith has denied the Rev. Gayle Baldwin a license to function as a priest in the diocese because she is an open and avowed lesbian.
Baldwin, 62, is an associate professor of religion at the University of North Dakota. She was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1980. She came out as a lesbian a decade ago in Wyoming, where she has a license to preach and administer the sacraments. She came to the university in 2000, according to news reports.
She blasted Smith in an open letter saying he refused to grant her a license to fulfill her ordination vows in the state of North Dakota. "His reason is that my life partner, whom God has given me to love and cherish, is a woman and not a man. He has stated that he will only grant a license to a priest who is celibate or married," she raged.
Bishop Smith responded, "I have been clear from the beginning what my expectations are, that is fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those not called to marriage." Bishop Smith is the leader of nearly 3,000 Episcopalians in North Dakota.
In a letter VOL obtained, Smith said it is "a confused time, for the Episcopal Church as the issue is debated." He is upholding what the church always has taught.
The bishop who succeeded Bishop Andy Fairfield (who resigned from The Episcopal Church and was later deposed) says he is following a policy set out in the 2004 Windsor Report, which called for a truce until the matter is settled. It also asked Episcopal bishops not to ordain gays and lesbians or to hold gay marriage ceremonies.
Outraged by his refusal to license her, Baldwin wrote an open letter to Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, TEC Presiding Bishop, and all the Bishops of The Episcopal Church noting especially homogenital New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson complaining bitterly about the bishop's "denial" in extending her a license.
"I am writing all of you as a response to the recent refusal of Bp. Michael Smith to grant me a license to fulfill my ordination vows in the state of North Dakota. The reason he has refused me has nothing to do with my character, nor my skills and gifts of ministry. His reason is that my life partner, whom God has given me to love and cherish is a woman and not a man. He has stated that he will only grant a license to a priest who is celibate or married. Since we cannot be formally married, our family is not considered legitimate by the church."
She went on to rage saying that, "If a bishop can do this to one, then anyone is potentially at risk. This is why I am writing this open letter to all so that we might begin a dialogical conversation over this matter."
Bishop Smith "needs to be challenged, on the issue of denying me a license to do what God called and what the church already has ordained me to do," Baldwin wrote.
"I am trying to be faithful to the scriptures and trying to be faithful to the tradition of the church, while at the same time being open to what God might be doing in a new way," Smith said. "We are in a period of discernment. It's not an issue of civil rights."
Smith said the diocese was mostly a diocese of moderately conservative and moderately liberal people. "We are not of one mind on the issue, so it's much more important for me to be consistent with the policy."
Before coming to the diocese Baldwin wrote saying that she was warned by Bishop Bruce Caldwell of Wyoming that then Bishop Andy Fairfield of North Dakota was rabidly against affirming the full humanity of gays, lesbians and transgender people.
On Maundy Thursday Baldwin led a service in Christus Rex Lutheran Campus Center at UND, an informal time in a fireside room. She did not serve the Eucharist as an Episcopal priest, both to respect the nondenominational aspect of the group and to avoid violating Episcopal law, since she isn't licensed to practice in the Diocese of North Dakota. About 38 people attended.
Dr. Louie Crew, The Episcopal Church's first sodomite emeritus and founder of the pansexual organization known as Integrity wrote at his blog, "I have no doubt that Bishop Smith has canonical license to bully Gayle in this matter, but he has no such license as a Christian. I grieve that Gayle must yet take up her cross."
By going public, Baldwin is trying to garner sympathy and support for her lesbianism. Because the Episcopal Church has formally accepted homosexuals and lesbians to all offices in the church, Ms. Baldwin believes she has an ecclesiastical, if not divine right, to yell and scream at the bishop for denying her access to an Episcopal pulpit in his diocese.
The truth is, he is well within his rights to deny her. There is no canon that demands or necessitates that he give her a job in his diocese. Not even Mrs. Jefferts Schori can coerce him, though she may try to do so by withholding money as a tool and weapon of the national church along with a few dioceses, who give money to support Native American Episcopalians in the diocese. Money is a powerful tool and it will be interesting to see how far this plays out.
If using the canons for coercion is possible then one needs to ask why is it that for nearly a quarter of a century, evangelical graduates of Ambridge-based Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry have been systematically denied pulpits in liberal Episcopal dioceses. The Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl complained mightily about this when he was president and dean of the School.
Consider, too, that Charles E. Bennison, the now inhibited Bishop of Pennsylvania, refused to license the Rev. Professor Allen Guelzo, Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Professor of History at Gettysburg College, a brilliant Lincoln scholar and former REC member who was ordained into the Episcopal Church by the Bishop of Quincy, the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman. Guelzo, who resides in a Philadelphia suburb, was denied a license to preach because, as VOL was told, he was too old and too smart. Bennison's rejection flew in the face of ageism, another Episcopal sin along with homophobia....one of many Bennison has committed and for which he will shortly receive just retribution.
Furthermore, no bishop did more to exclude straight white males from his diocese than did the former Bishop of Washington, Ronald Haines. For over seven years, he refused to allow or ordain heterosexual men in his diocese, a stance that shocked incoming bishop John Chane when he was told. An Anglo-Catholic writer living in the Diocese of Washington noted that, during the tenure of Bishop Jane Dixon, black straight men were not ordained, either. It might also account for the fact that if it weren't for the Soper Fund, the diocese would be bankrupt.
Another hater of orthodox Episcopalians, specifically Anglo-Catholics, is the Bishop of Long Island, Orris Walker. He has managed during his tenure to make life so miserable for orthodox Episcopalians, whose only "sin" was to use the 1928 Prayer Book, that he publicly and privately berated them and systematically drove them out of the diocese. Most have now fled the diocese.
More recently, there was the case of a married Nashotah House graduate whom Bishop J. Jon Bruno refused to ordain in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Did the seminarian take his grievance public? No, he stated on his blog that he would not discuss it other than to say that he would seek ordination in the Diocese of Fort Worth.
If Bishop Michael Smith can be coerced or bullied into submission, then the sodomite and pro-sodomite lobby in The Episcopal Church will have won over the canons, canons that are now being liberally misapplied in the removal of Bishops John David Schofield and William Cox.
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PB: Keep questions about sexuality in conversation
The Boston Globe reports:
Saying "I don't believe that there is any will in this church to move backward," the top official of the Episcopal Church USA said yesterday that the election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire has been "a great blessing" despite triggering intense controversy and talk of possible schism.
In an interview during a visit to Boston, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori compared the gay rights struggle to battles over slavery and women's rights, and said she believes that it has become a vocation for the Episcopal Church "to keep questions of human sexuality in conversation, and before not just the rest of our own church, but the rest of the world."
