Asian Episcopalians Face Growing Church Splits
January 4, 2008
The Episcopal Church, which traces its roots to the Church of England, is one of the oldest Christian denominations serving the United States and the Bay Area Asian community. For years, comedians made fun of the church, calling it the denomination of “Republicans praying together.”
But over the past several decades, the church has shed its image as the exclusive province of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Citing the growing liberalism of the national church in tolerating the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy (including the nation’s first openly gay bishop, Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire), some dioceses and parishes in conservative parts of the United States have talked openly about breaking away from the nation’s Episcopal Church and affiliating themselves with more conservative elements of the worldwide Anglican Communion, particularly in Africa. The rumblings about the departure of churches in Savannah, Ga., and Pittsburgh, Pa., and Texas have made national headlines during the past year.
Not unexpectedly, the Diocese of San Joaquin, which serves California’s Central Valley from Lodi to Bakersfield, voted on Dec. 8 to separate from the U.S. Episcopal Church and affiliate itself with a South American province of the Anglican Communion.
Progressives vs. Jaded Reactionaries
The growing split within the Episcopal Church in the United States has generated new challenges to its more than 17,000 Asian American baptized members and clergy.
“Sometimes it is necessary that there be divisions in the Church — as it was in the apostolic times on the question of circumcision as requisite for Christian baptism, on the issue of slavery which divided the American Church, the ordination of women and the ordination of the gay bishop — so that the genuine among us would be recognized,” says the Rev. Dr. Winfred B. Vergara, the current missioner for the national Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry, which has 120 congregations and approximately 1.8 percent of the Episcopal Church membership. “Father Fred,” as he is known, describes the current disharmony in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as “worrisome and burdensome,” especially if elements of the church end up in litigation with the national church or local diocese over church money and property.
Yet, he is hardly neutral about the international controversy that has roiled one of America’s oldest denominations, and he speaks passionately about an “essential message of love and reconciliation.”
“It is not revisionism, but progressive revelation when we come to have a more sympathetic understanding of gay persons in light of Scriptures,” Vergara said. “The Bible was culture-bound even as it shaped the development of the church. The world moves faster due to increasing globalization. I think conservative Christianity is jaded and is reactionary.”
Opportunity in Disharmony
Although he is “sad” that the Diocese of San Joaquin “chose to rebel against this bold and progressive direction of the Church,” Vergara believes that the current desire of some Episcopalians to break with the national body presents an opportunity for new leadership from nontraditional sources.
“This inclusive stance of the Episcopal Church is, to me, a signal that the mainstream Episcopal Church should now give more attention to the other marginalized members of the Church, namely the immigrants and ethnic groups such as he Asians, Latinos, blacks, Native and Indigenous Americans, and the young people who are more open to change and more conversant with contemporary world developments,” Vergara said. “The Church should be the avant garde, the leader for change toward inclusion and respect of the dignity of every human being, rather than become an institution of oppression and exclusion.”
Preaching in the ‘Hood
If the Episcopal Church is to attract new adherents to the progressive vision advanced by Vergara and other Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry members, the hard work will be done in dozens of small parishes across the country by new leaders.
One of those church leaders is the Rev. David Lui, pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in San Francisco’s Sunset District. Lui serves a congregation in transition. Located on a quiet section of 29th Avenue, Sunday worship services typically have plenty of empty pews, as many of its aging parishioners slowly fade from the scene.
Lui, who leads a small and welcoming congregation, knows that his church must reinvent itself to serve the changing population of his parish. A native of Hong Kong, Lui can preach the Gospel easily in Cantonese or English. In addition to bilingual worship services, Incarnation church operates a variety of neighborhood programs that include ESL classes, church day care services and collecting socks for the homeless.
The serene and sedate services at Incarnation church contrast sharply with the crowds of faithful served by other places of worship that often offer simultaneous religious rites administered on multiple floors in multiple languages. In an age and in a city where organized religion lacks its former prominence, and folk-rock music supplements contemporary liturgy at the evangelical churches of other denominations, Lui and other Asian Episcopal pastors must search for new ways to grow their flocks.
“I do not think [the San Joaquin split] will have a negative impact on the commitment of Asian American Episcopalians to the Episcopal Church,” Vergara said. “Many educated Episcopalians, especially the young people, are able to integrate their understanding of Scripture with the changing culture. In the American contemporary context, our knowledge of human beings continues to grow through the advancement of science and technology. Science is not antithetical to Scripture, but illuminates Scripture.”
“There should be no outcast in the Church of Jesus Christ,” Vergara declares, “and we should not judge ministers by the color of their skin or their sexual orientation, but by their gifts, calling and commitment to the ministry.”
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The episcopal organization has become a cult, much like the mormans.
The Episcopal Church has been brought down by a coordinated attack that began almost 20 years ago. It
has been infiltrated and purposely destroyed. It will not
survive another 20 years except to have its assets stolen by the attackers.