News of recent developments involving St. James’, Newport Beach, and All Saints’, Long Beach, has been greeted by many of us here with distress, though not with surprise. After all, we are merely seeing the implementation of the strategy so chillingly laid out months ago for the American Anglican Council by Pittsburgh priest Geoff Chapman.

How strange that the Anglican Communion has been turned into the Wild West, where rustlers, with crosiers and miters, rather than lariats and horses, steal parishes from their erstwhile colleagues! How ironic that, almost simultaneously with the defection of the Los Angeles parishes, the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDAP) should release publicly the testimony it recently offered to the Lambeth Commission, in which Hugo Blankenship could say: “We believe the Network is worthy of your trust and that of the whole Communion.”! With equal sincerity, Bishop Robert Duncan spoke of the Episcopal Church as the burning, fatally wounded, World Trade Center towers, neglecting to include, in his analogy, the role of himself and of his supporters in piloting the airplanes! I can only imagine how difficult it is to maintain episcopal collegiality at a time when an Episcopal bishop regularly makes such destructive statements.

I do not write to commiserate, however, but to congratulate you on your wise and timely pastoral letter, and to offer whatever tangible assistance Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) might be able to offer in the present circumstances. You have, I believe, labeled disloyalty, betrayal, and theological error for what they are, and, in so doing, you are helping to awaken and rally the majority of Episcopalians who have hitherto been ignorant of the threat to our church or who have mistakenly viewed that threat as insignificant. Your swift action to discipline the clergy involved and your resolution to protect the property that is our common heritage represents a turning point at which the Episcopal Church has now declared that it will not longer tolerate that which is intolerable.

PEP members feel a special sadness over these events because, as often seems to be the case, the breakaway parishes have multiple connections to our diocese and to organizations with which our bishop is associated: we have no doubt that the actions of the clergy of these parishes are part of the NACDAP strategy. In fact, beginning with the David Moyer incident two years ago, the transferring of clergy to dioceses outside the Episcopal Church to evade church canons seems to have become something of a Bishop Duncan specialty, and, judging by his Lambeth Commission testimony, a source of satisfaction for him.

The diocese of Pittsburgh is indeed dominated by the so-called “orthodox.” Nonetheless, more than a quarter of the people of this diocese support the PEP vision of a united and tolerant church, and disapprove of the NACDAP and its actions.

Know that our prayers are with you, as, in coming days, will be the prayers of increasing numbers of Episcopalians.

Yours in Christ,
Lionel Deimel
President, Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, A Via Media USA Alliance Member

cc: The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold

828 Rockwood Avenue • Pittsburgh, PA 15234 • (412) 343-5337 • (412) 343-6816 Fax

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ORTHODOX PITTSBURGH RECTOR REBUTS DIEMEL'S CLAIMS

- Churches that have formally distanced themselves from the diocese and in some sense aligned with PEP's goals = 7 (or 9.9 percent of the 71 churches in the diocese)

- Average Sunday attendance at those seven churches = 826 or just under 10 percent of Diocesan total. Be kind and include two more churches that have made their position known but haven't done anything formal, = 1287, or 15.5 percent. of average Sunday attendance.

- PEP's pathetic attempt to rally grassroots support for their Duncan bashing fest through "unity petition" = 149 or less than three quarters of 1 percent.

- However you slice it, nothing here that even begins to approximate the 25 percent they're claiming. Just a shrinking group of old angry liberals with lousy math skills.

Here's the long version

1. This Spring, PEP tried to get a diocesan petition drive put together of parishioners from all over the diocese who objected to the Diocese joining the Network. They could only get 149 signatures from people in 20 churches, again with a vast majority of those coming from a half dozen churches. For a diocese with 20,335 members, 153 is exactly three quarters of one percent of the Diocese - 25 percent support? Hah, they can't even clear 1 percent when they tried. (source: http://www.geocities.com/pephomepage/html/peptalk-2004-03.pdf)

2. Only seven churches in the Diocese have formally distanced themselves from the Network (PEP itself only records six http://www.geocities.com/pephomepage/html/peptalk-2004-03.pdf p. 6), but there is at least one more that has publicized such a decision http://www.stpauls-mtlebanon.org/news.htm). Two other churches might as well be included. As a group, these nine churches have an average Sunday attendance of 1,287 (2002 numbers) available online here: http://www.pgh.anglican.org/clientImages/25239/712002parochialvitalstatistics.pdf). This works out to be 15.5 percent of the Diocese's Sunday attendance of 8,283. Even more fun, several of these churches are far from unified in their stand. Counting all of their members as committed PEP supporters is an exercise in wishful thinking.

3. The friendliest way to run the numbers for them is to count Total Active Baptized Members. If that's the case and you count the two "informally aligned churches", you can get them all the way up to their claimed 25 percent. However, there is a lot of number padding going on here. The three largest liberal churches, all with a membership between 1000 - and 1500 have an average attendance between a third and a fifth of that, so I think the most accurate number is to count folks in the pews. Moreover, as I mentioned above several of these churches are hardly of one mind on this issue.

The rector who wrote this has asked to remain anonymous fearing personal recriminations to his ministry.

END