In a historic move, a controversial candidate for bishop in the Episcopal Church who became famous for receiving a Zen Buddhist “lay ordination” has had his election nullified following his failure to receive the necessary consents from diocesan standing committees. The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester of the Diocese of Northern Michigan was chosen during a special convention on February 21 to succeed the late James Kelsey. IRD strongly opposed Thew Forrester’s election, initially arguing that his commitment to Zen Buddhism compromised his Christian witness and made him ineligible to lead a diocese.
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori notified the Northern Michigan diocese on July 27th of the election’s nullification in a letter to Standing Committee President Linda Piper.
“As Presiding Bishop, and in accordance with Canon III.11.5, I am writing to inform you that I have not received from a majority of the Standing Committees of the dioceses consent to the ordination of the bishop-elect within the required 120 days,” Jefferts Schori wrote. “Therefore I am declaring the election null and void and with this letter hereby giving notice to the Standing Committee of the diocese and to the bishop-elect.”
The Episcopal Church has not denied consent to a candidate for bishop since 1936, when the house of Bishops declined to consent to the seating of John Torok, nominated for Bishop Suffragan of Eau Claire (Wisconsin) on procedural grounds. The last candidate rejected on purely theological grounds was James de Koven, denied consent as bishop of Illinois in 1875. Bishop Mark Lawrence, a candidate to lead the Diocese of South Carolina, initially failed to receive the necessary consents in 2007, but easily cleared the required threshold in a subsequent election held later that year.
Forrester’s election drew opposition from all corners of the 2.1 million-member denomination, with both conservative and liberal camps finding fault with different aspects of Forrester’s election and practices.
Forrester first drew attention for his Zen Buddhist “lay ordination”, earning him the moniker of the “Buddhist Bishop”. Further investigation of his practices revealed unilateral editing of the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal rite and the inserting of a verse from the Koran into a church service as the Word of God.
An unofficial tally compiled by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Frank Lockwood also revealed that Thew Forrester failed to receive the necessary number of consents from bishops.
“My understanding is that he did not receive sufficient consents among the bishops either,” Neva Rae Fox, the church’s public affairs officer, told The Living Church, a news service that reports on Anglicanism.
Jefferts Schori’s July letter to Piper served as confirmation of Thew Forrester’s defeat. It was an expected conclusion to the election, as Lockwood had already reported the effective outcome of the vote in early June.
In a statement released by the Episcopal News Service, Thew Forrester said that he had been “extraordinarily blessed and honored to walk with my friends from the Diocese of Northern Michigan over these past months as their bishop-elect.”
“I treasure the support they have extended me and my family, as well as that I have received from Hong Kong to Holland and from Great Britain to New Zealand, and indeed from so many throughout The Episcopal Church,” Thew Forrester said in the statement. “As we live and move and have our being in Christ, there is truly a Holy Wisdom in all that is unfolding, and as St. John of the Cross affirms, a grace in ‘all that happens.’”
It is unclear how the diocese plans to proceed following Thew Forrester’s rejection. The third smallest diocese in the Episcopal Church, Northern Michigan has an average Sunday attendance of less than 700 Episcopalians scattered among 27 tiny congregations on the state’s Upper Peninsula. Less than a half-dozen of the dioceses’ clergy positions are stipendiary, with the remainder filled by clergy and laity serving on a voluntary basis.
The diocese had chosen an internal candidate partly due to limited finances. An update earlier this spring in a diocesan newsletter indicated that the standing committee was investigating the possibility of an “episcopate by committee” – a tacit acknowledgement that Thew Forrester’s election was already doomed.
“We invite the wider church to reflect with us on what this experience can teach us about the episcopal search and consent process,” Northern Michigan Standing Committee members said in a statement released on July 28. “Among the issues ripe for discussion are how bishops and standing committees can best be made aware of the particular needs of individual dioceses, and how new communications technologies affect the consent process. We hope that out of our disappointment can come a deeper understanding of the ways in which we can all be accountable to one another as members of the body of Christ.”
The reference to “new communications technologies affect[ing] the consent process” may have been a reaction to the collection and dissemination of Thew Forrester’s liturgies and prayer book edits by conservative Anglican bloggers.
In a June e-mail to Lockwood, one standing committee member from another Pro-Thew Forrester diocese expressed frustration with how the consent process had played out.
“Many of us are grievously disappointed in how Thew Forrester has been treated and slandered — regardless of how we may feel about him, his diocese has the right to select a bishop best suited to its needs,” the standing committee member wrote. “If he’s passed the Oxford background check and there are no allegations of sexual or financial malfeasance, then the rest of us outside of Northern Michigan should keep our mouths shut!”
“As you might imagine, the episode concerning Northern Michigan has sent a chill up the spines of a few folks in the Episcopal Church,” the standing committee member continued. “The fact is, experimentation with liturgy has been going on in dioceses around the country for a long time and no one’s been tarred-and-feathered for it until now.”
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