Like Lincoln, Mathes finds himself in the midst of a civil war. So does the rest of the U.S. Episcopal Church, fractured in a debate over homosexuality. Its Gettysburg, if you will, came three years ago with ordination of the church's first openly gay bishop - V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Sex and the Episcopal Church

Bishop V. Gene Robinson

August 2003

General Convention votes to confirm the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, making him the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church's history. The denomination represents the autonomous U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Three Southern California congregations vote to secede from the Episcopal Church and affiliate with the Anglican diocese of Uganda. Frank T. Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, sends a letter of concern to Henry L. Orombi, archbishop of Uganda.

November 2003

Episcopal Church officially consecrates Robinson as bishop of the New Hampshire diocese.

September 2004

Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles files lawsuits in Los Angeles and Orange counties against the three rebel congregations, claiming the church buildings and other property.

November 2004

L.A. Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno announces that he would stop blessing same-sex unions in an attempt to win back the breakaway parishes and appease conservative critics, but he stops short of banning his priests from officiating at such ceremonies.

February 2005

Anglican Church leaders call for a moratorium on public rites of same-sex blessings and ask that the Episcopalian Church and its like-minded Canadian counterpart withdraw voting representatives from a June meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. They also ask that, at the meeting, those bodies explain the 2003 actions.

March 2005

Episcopal House of Bishops declares a moratorium of consecrating bishops until the General Convention in 2006, expressing regret for its decisions in 2003.

December 2005

Rev. Keith Acker In Alpine, the Rev. Keith Acker resigns as rector of Christ the King Episcopal Church, taking the bulk of his congregation with him to form the Alpine Anglican Church of the Blessed Trinity, which allies itself with a conservative, evangelical branch called the Anglican Province of America.

January 2006

St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Oceanside votes by a 97 percent majority to break away from the U.S. Episcopal Church and the San Diego diocese. The 250-member church plans to be part of the Anglican Communion under the jurisdictional oversight of Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia.

June 2006

General Convention gathering in Columbus, Ohio. Its agenda includes reconciling the 2003 convention's policy about sexuality with the demands of the Anglican Communion.

Compiled by Beth Wood, from Union-Tribune articles, the Episcopal News Service and other news sources. For Mathes, who last year became the spiritual leader of some 25,000 parishioners from Oceanside to Yuma, Ariz., his denomination isn't the only one caught in the headlights of the sexuality debate. Other religions, from evangelical opponents to interfaith progressives, are likewise taking up arms. Just last week, the U.S. Senate defeated a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, though the senators themselves were almost equally divided.

"I think our country has every aspect of great civil strife," says Mathes, a 46-year-old former official in the Chicago diocese. "I think we're at a point of level of intolerance that is becoming dangerously high."

But Mathes believes the church can be part of the solution. "Our opportunity is to find a new way - the work of reconciliation."

This week, the battlefront shifted to Columbus, Ohio, where Mathes and the other Episcopal bishops, along with hundreds of clergy and lay people elected as delegates, are gathered for what is expected to be a crucial General Convention.

Held every three years, the General Convention is the church's national legislature. And this meeting, which began Tuesday and ends next Wednesday, is wrestling with whether to surrender, call a truce or continue in a direction that conservatives say will surely lead to further divisions here and abroad.

At least 20 congregations - including two in this diocese - already have left the Episcopal Church, seeking oversight from more-conservative bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The U.S. denomination, with 2.3 million members, is a branch of the 77-million global Anglican Church.

Mathes, a private school administrator who became a priest, doesn't expect this month's convention to end the skirmishes. They may not even be resolved in his children's lifetime; pictures of his 20-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter decorate one wall of his office in the bottom floor of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The bishop himself leans toward inclusion, telling parishioners that he believes sexuality is not a choice, but is a "God-given state."

"Because of this, I believe that God is calling the church to see in His time a more-complete way of including gay and lesbian persons in the church, including blessing of committed relationships and ordinations," he says.

Then the centrist in him re-emerges. He assures people that he holds his beliefs gently and is willing to be wrong. "We have to endure the ambiguity," he says in an interview. " . . . In the fullness of time, we will find the correct way."

Wishy-washy? Carroll Levien, a member of St. Dunstan's in San Carlos, agrees he sometimes sounds that way.

"A bishop is a politician. He's trying to make everyone happy, and he has 51 parishes that he's trying to keep together," says Levien, who is one of four lay representatives elected from this diocese to be at the General Convention.

She was impressed by Mathes' recent series of town-hall-style meetings that he held around the diocese. "I like the bishop's middle ways. I look at it as he has a lot to try to meld together."

Jarvis Nolan, another delegate and a member of St. Bartholomew's in Poway, is more adamant. "I think he's just brilliant," Nolan says. "I think he's the best thing for the Diocese of San Diego."

If there was a honeymoon for Mathes, a soft-spoken man with glasses and a careful countenance, it didn't last long.

He was elected here in November 2004 to replace Bishop Gethin Hughes, a conservative who was retiring. He was consecrated the next March, and nine months later, in December 2005, the volleys began.

The Rev. Keith Acker, the priest at Christ the King Church in Alpine, resigned and took most of his congregation with him to start a new church under the alignment of a conservative Anglican group. The next month, St. Anne's in Oceanside voted to leave. Its rector, the Rev. Anthony Baron, announced that St. Anne's would be under the jurisdiction of Anglican Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia and planned to keep the church building.

Mathes was stunned. In both cases, he sent priests to minister to those who wanted to remain in the Episcopal Church. He's also hinted that the Oceanside building issue isn't over ("I do not wish you to take inaction as a signal of anything but patience," is how he puts it).

In April, he sent a letter to all parish rectors, asking for copies of various church records and warning them that if they try to withdraw from the diocese, he will take disciplinary action.

The abruptness rankled some recipients.

"There wasn't even a phone call ahead of time," says the Rev. Joe Rees of All Saints in Vista. "You would think he would want to talk to us first."

Rees says he understands that the bishop is trying to forestall further bleeding. "But the means by which he did that was very intrusive and difficult to take for all of us just trying to do the job and being faithful."

Groups like the Anglican Communion Network, a conservative alliance, called the letter "a clear and oppressive threat to faithful orthodox rectors and their people."

But Mathes says he is only trying to protect the diocese and enforce the rules of the church. One of the hardest parts of being bishop, he says, has been adjusting to condemnations from people who don't know him. How does he cope? "By remembering that they do not know me. How can somebody who does not know you, hate you?"

Rees, a conservative, gives Mathes high marks for his administrative skills - particularly dealing with the budget crunch he inherited (earlier this year, the diocese ended publication of its monthly newspaper and eliminated four jobs as part of $70,000 in cutbacks).

He also commends him for wanting reconciliation, though he has doubts that staying in the middle can accomplish much. "It's not like being a centrist is going to pull somebody into a new realm of truth when there's already a truth established."

Acker, the Alpine minister who left last December, says he has no regrets. "I feel like I'm doing those things that I was called to do 20 years ago and have been distracted from with all the political infighting that's been going on." As for his former bishop, Acker doesn't think he's a moderate. "I think he takes what I call a revisionist view of Scripture."

In 2004, an angry Anglican Church rebuked its American cousin for electing Robinson, the gay bishop. The so-called Windsor Report asked for an apology and a moratorium on similar elections "until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges." It also sought a halt to same-sex blessings that were being conducted in some dioceses.

A special commission of the U.S. church responded with several carefully nuanced resolutions for this month's General Convention. Among the proposals: expressing "our own deep regret for the pain that others have experienced" and urging dioceses to not elect bishops "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion."

But yesterday, the subject of the debate - Robinson himself - told reporters the General Convention should not heed a request from Anglicans worldwide to place a moratorium on electing gay or lesbian bishops.

"It's not our job to decide what the Anglican Communion will or will not do in response to our actions," he said at a news conference, according to The Associated Press.

The head of Integrity, a national coalition of gay Episcopalians, said the church's membership in the communion doesn't mean it should give up its ability to make its own rules.

"If indeed there is some kind of split or schism over these issues, I want to insist that the responsibility needs to lay firmly at the feet of those who are threatening to leave, not those of us who are threatening to stay," said the Rev. Susan Russell, president of Integrity, according to the AP report.

Mathes has not ordained gay priests or authorized same-sex blessings. He says he's "very comfortable" with the resolutions and suggests they will be approved at the General Convention. He will not say who he will vote for as the new presiding bishop, or senior leader, to replace the retiring Frank Griswold. There are four nominees, including three bishops who voted to approve Robinson's election and the first female candidate.

Mathes, meanwhile, is hoping this civil war won't end with losers and winners. He quotes from more recent dialogue than Abraham Lincoln - from the 1995 space-mission movie "Apollo 13." In a pivotal scene, one character laments that the looming disaster could be the worst in NASA's history. To which another person replies, "With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour."

The bishop adds a postscript: "I believe that if we continue with the conviction that our main work is the work of reconciliation, the same will be true for us."

Jim Merriken, who goes to St. Peter's in Del Mar, says he spoke with Mathes at a memorial service last month. Merriken told the bishop he appreciated his attempts to reach out to all sides.

"But under my breath," Merriken adds, "I said, 'Good luck, Jim Mathes.' "
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