Episcopal Schism: Truth on Both Sides

I’m trying to imagine belonging to an Episcopal church in Newport Beach. To borrow from John Lennon, it isn’t hard to do.

But then I try to imagine disavowing the national Episcopal Church and the Los Angeles diocese with which my church is affiliated and aligning myself instead with the Diocese of Luweero in Uganda.

As Lennon might have said, “Now, that would be a stretch!”

But that’s where St. James Church and its 1,200 men, women and children find themselves these days -- pariahs in their own land of Southern California milk and honey but welcomed to the bosom of an African congregation halfway around the world.

How to put this gently? Only organized religion can produce a schism like this.

This is a liberal/conservative split of Biblical, not political, proportions. The St. James congregation sees itself as upholders of the orthodox traditions of the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion to which it belongs. The national organization is seen as more liberal, especially after its leaders last year named an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

If that weren’t bad enough, says St. James rector Praveen Bunyan, national church leaders support same-sex unions and are fudging on the Scriptural teaching that acceptance of Jesus Christ is the only path to an afterlife. Some Episcopal leaders have said they believe that is true for Christians but that they won’t impose that belief system on members of other faiths.

Unacceptable, says Bunyan, a genial 42-year-old father of two now leading the church on Balboa Peninsula in a legal battle that has broadened to whether the St. James secessionists must relinquish their church and everything in it.

“When I came here [in 2003],” Bunyan says, “congregation members started to ask me, ‘Why are we part of a church that has just gone so far away from its basic tenets?’ ” His congregants, he says, started thinking they had more in common with a neighboring Presbyterian church or a nondenominational evangelical church than with fellow Episcopalians.

While much of the controversy within the national Episcopal Church involved the gay bishop, Bunyan says the rupture is at a much more fundamental level. “It came to the point where we had to be faithful to the basic tenets of the Christian faith or to an institution [the national church organization],” Bunyan says.

Los Angeles and national Episcopal leaders have said they’re merely following Christ’s teachings to be inclusive and tolerant of all people.

We’ve heard this debate over Biblical interpretation before. And as we’ve also seen over the centuries, squabbles between believers can turn into the bare-knuckle variety. So it is with St. James, now being sued to vacate the premises.

I’m too smart to get between quarreling true believers on theology, but I’ll side with the St. James folks on the eviction battle. It seems to me they should have the right to divorce the national organization without being forced to move out of the house with only the clothes on their backs.

No doubt Los Angeles is arguing that it can’t run a diocese if its churches are bolting, but Bunyan says, “This congregation paid for the property and holds the title and deeds.”

As the Lord said, “Let there be litigation.”

It’s tacky to cluck my tongue when both sides say the fight is emotionally and spiritually wrenching, but let me cast a small aspersion on each of them.

To the “traditionalists” at St. James, I can only say I’m certain they’re misreading Jesus.

And to the diocese willing to make homeless waifs out of St. James congregants, I can only ask what happened to its belief in tolerance and inclusion.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana .parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.