 I
really had not intended to create this page, which provides links to material on
the World Wide Web related to a controversy involving the Episcopal Diocese of
Washington (represented by its bishop pro tempore Jane Dixon) and an old parish in rural
Maryland over the calling of a controversial rector, Fr. Samuel Edwards. This page exists
because I was asked for a document I could not find on the Web, an amicus brief
filed with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals by Bishop Iker of Fort Worth
and Bishop Duncan of Pittsburgh. As I had been unable to convince anyone else to
make this document available on the Web, I decided to do it myself.
The Fourth
Circuit has now decided the case
(on May 22, 2002).
We can hope that this is the end of the line for this affair, as the
court rejected all arguments of the defendants (although it remanded the
injunction to the lower court for clarification on some minor
issues). I cannot imagine the Supreme Court’s accepting any
appeal of this decision, should the defendants request one.
(Nonetheless, see the story
on Edwards’ attorney’s reaction.) The Diocese
of Washington has issued a press
release, and a story
has been published quoting Fr. Edwards’ reaction. The Episcopal
News Service (ENS) story
provides a brief summary of the affair.
On June 27, 2002, Fr. Edwards announced that he was resigning his orders in
the Episcopal Church and joining the Anglican
Province of Christ the King (APCK). (Read the ENS
story, as well as the story from the APCK
Web site.) This means that he will not be tried in
the Diocese
of Fort Worth for preaching without a license at Christ Church,
Accokeek, beyond the allowed 60 days. (The trial had been scheduled for
late July.) Fr. Edwards has remained in Maryland with his family and formed
a new APCK congregation in Waldorf, which is less than 10 miles from
Accokeek. (The APCK lists its churches on its Web site. Look for Saint
Mary the Virgin, listed under LaPlata, Maryland.)
I will not attempt to describe the controversy, but I will provide
additional links for the visitor wanting to investigate the story on his own. Some basic
facts and a description of the dramatic events that took place at Christ Church,
Accokeek, Maryland, on May 27, 2001, can be found in the explanation of my poem
“Accokeek.”
As events have unfolded, many stories have appeared on the Web sites
of The
Washington Post, The
Baltimore Sun, and Episcopal
News Service (ENS). Unfortunately, non-current stories on these
sites eventually disappear into difficult-to-search or fee-based
archives. Many of the past ENS stories can be found on the World
Faith News site, which has a reasonable search capability lacking on
ENS’s own site. One
background article that both describes the origin of the controversy and
attempts to put it in a larger context is available, curiously, on the
site of The
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (Apparently, this newspaper is a less
aggressive archiver than most.) Recently, Institute
for Democracy Studies issued a report called “A
Church at Risk: The Episcopal ‘Renewal Movement’,” that
briefly discusses the conflict, again, in a larger context. This report has been viewed as either a devastating
exposé of a right-wing conspiracy within the Anglican Communion or a
damnable piece of liberal paranoia. (The American
Anglican Council (AAC) site, for example, reproduces the original ENS
release about the report, along with criticism
of it. The Living Church, in its January 20, 2002, issue
editorialized about the report in a piece called “Conspiracy
Unfounded,” but the editorial is apparently not available on the Web.)
Many source documents, most of them from the diocese, are available on the site of the
Diocese
of Washington. (Scan the press releases
releases for 2001
and 2002.)
The diocese is not a disinterested party, of course,
but the documents on its site are what they are. In a sense, the Iker/Duncan
brief belongs on this site, which includes a brief supporting the
opposing side, but the diocese has decided (more or less) to post only
documents supporting its own position. One of the documents available on
the site is a partial chronology that is helpful in
understanding events. An interesting commentary
by a Christ Church parishioner, describing the origin of the affair from
a perspective within the embattled parish, can be found on Louie
Crew’s Anglican Pages.
Another site that provides useful chronological information about the
conflict and links to relevant news reports is that of Integrity/Virginia,
though material about Accokeek is interspersed with information about
other affairs. The
Canon Law Institute, whose Executive Director, Charles Nall (e-mail), has been the lead counsel for Fr. Edwards and the Christ
Church Vestry on a pro bono basis, has a Web
page containing a summary of events from the Edwards/Christ Church
point of view. Some of the legal filings from that camp are described on
this page, but Mr. Nalls has chosen not to share copies of the pleadings
themselves, describing them as “quite large, and ... a bit complicated
for the regular reader ... .” His arguments are largely
jurisdictional, which I suspect Mr. Nalls assumes makes them
soporific. There is some likelihood that, eventually, they will be
posted on The Canon Law Institute site. Should they become available, I
will post a link here.
An extensive collection of stories on the Accokeek controversy are
collected on the site of the Washington
Chapter of the American Anglican Council. Most of these stories were
written by Robert Stowe England, a journalist whose sympathy for Fr.
Edwards is not well disguised. Other sites supporting Fr. Edwards include that
of the AAC, Forward
in Faith North America, and the Diocese
of Fort Worth. AAC has a story
on the Iker/Duncan brief. The Diocese of Fort Worth has a page of news
and documents related to Accokeek, which includes the letter that
Bishop Jack Iker sent to Christ Church on May 26, 2001, agreeing to take
that church under his “Episcopal oversight and protection.”
Whatever larger issues may be at stake, the Accokeek dispute concerns
the power of a bishop, in particular, the role a bishop plays in the
calling of a Rector. The rules governing this process can be found in
the Canons
of the Episcopal Church (Title III, Canons 16 and 17).
Comments and suggestions are welcome. Happy reading!
— LED, 1/25/2002, last revised 3/10/2004
If the Accokeek story has not reached
an end, it surely has reached the end of a chapter. I will revise this
page if I learn of new developments, however.
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