Episcopal leader Jefferts Schori picks predominantly gay parish for first official appearance in Dallas
Terry Bible, left, and Kris Braddock, members of the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Dallas, confer in the parish’s community vegetable garden on Tuesday, April 22. Bible and Braddock were preparing the garden for a blessing ceremony Monday, April 28, led by the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the national church. – JOHN WRIGHT/Dallas Voice
The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle was the first local parish to desegregate, one of the first local parishes to elect a woman to its governing council, and one of the first mainline churches in Dallas to open its doors to people dying from AIDS.
So perhaps it’s only fitting that on Monday, April 28, St. Thomas will be the first congregation in the Dallas Episcopal Diocese to receive a visit from Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the national church.
Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead any branch of the 80-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion, consented to the election of the first openly gay bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church, Gene Robinson, in 2003.
Jefferts Schori, who’s bound by church canon to visit each of the more than 110 dioceses during her nine-year tenure, will be at St. Thomas, 6525 Inwood Road, for a public ceremony to bless the parish’s new community vegetable garden at 2:30 p.m. Jefferts Schori also will speak and answer questions.
"I think it really makes a statement about where Katharine is that she would choose St. Thomas," said Fred Ellis, a St. Thomas member and a former president of Integrity, the national group for LGBT Episcopalians. "It has a long history from its beginning of being out there in the forefront of social issues."
‘Open to all God’s kids’
Stephen Waller, the openly gay rector of St. Thomas, said when the all-white congregation decided to accept black members not long after it was established in 1950, a notice went out to the other parishes in the diocese explaining the situation, and police protection was needed for Sunday services.
Waller said the parish first elected a woman to serve on its vestry, or governing council, in 1970. In 1997, with female clergy still the pre-eminent issue in the church, Waller named the Rev. Christianne McKee as curate, or assistant priest.
Around 1985, Waller said, a man dying from AIDS walked into St. Thomas and asked to be cared for. The man had been rejected by the church he grew up in, but St. Thomas’ congregation, then led by rector Ted Karpf, took him in.
The decision prompted some members to leave, Waller said, but soon the parish found a new demographic. St. Thomas became known as "the AIDS church" and was the birthplace for AIDS Interfaith Network, now one of the leading HIV service providers in Dallas.
"In the intensity of that period, when people were dropping like flies, the parish was highly involved and that pulled in a lot of gays and lesbians who wanted to support that ministry," Waller said.
Today, St. Thomas remains predominantly gay, although perhaps less so than it once was, Waller said.
But the 300-member congregation is growing, and it draws people from all over the Metroplex who want to be part of a diverse, inclusive congregation that supports the national church.
"We’ve never passed anything saying that we’re open to gays and lesbians; we’re just open to all God’s kids," Waller said. "You just don’t feel very comfortable here if you have very rigid ideas about things."
Dallas diocese unlikely to leave
Since Jefferts Schori’s election as 26th presiding bishop in 2006, the national church has continued to face a widening rift over Scriptural interpretation and homosexuality.
In response to the election of Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, many congregations and even some entire dioceses have chosen to leave. But in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, Jefferts Schori said they represent less than 1 percent of the church.
"Our job is to bless their going and reassure them our door is always open and that we’ll keep the light on for them," Jefferts Schori said.
A spokeswoman for the national church said Jefferts Schori wasn’t available for comment this week.
Last year, the Fort Worth diocese took the first steps to withdraw from the national church, although some say the decision had more to do with the role of women than gays. The Fort Worth diocese will vote later this year on whether to finalize the move.
Like Fort Worth’s, the Dallas diocese is considered conservative. However, the consensus seems to be that Dallas is unlikely to follow in Fort Worth’s footsteps.
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| The Rev. Jefferts Schori |
Jefferts Schori’s visit to St. Thomas was approved by James Stanton, bishop of the Dallas diocese, who’s considered a leader in the global effort against gay bishops.
In the 1990s, Stanton was one of 10 bishops who filed charges against a bishop in New Jersey for ordaining a gay man. Stanton, who didn’t respond to a request for comment this week, reportedly doesn’t plan to attend Monday’s visit.
Despite the circumstances, Waller and others said they don’t believe Jefferts Schori’s decision to visit St. Thomas was intended as an overt or provocative political gesture. Rather, they say, she was merely responding to an invitation to bless the garden from lay members.
‘A natural extension’
Kris Braddock and her husband are among the many St. Thomas members who’ve rented plots in the Community Garden, an experiment in urban agriculture.
Braddock, who moved with her husband from New York to Dallas two years ago, said the couple intially feared they wouldn’t be able to find a parish they felt comfortable in. The Braddocks previously were members of St. Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan.
"It reminds us a lot of our congregation in New York," Braddock said as she helped prepare the Community Garden for Jeffert Schori’s visit, which she called "a joyous occasion."
"We hope that a lot of other Episcopalians will come and see that having an open mind isn’t a bad thing," she said. "It’s an important visit locally and globally, I think."
Braddock said she also volunteers for the Resource Center of Dallas, which operates a nutrition program for people with HIV/AIDS that will receive a portion of the harvest.
Harry Anderson, the openly gay senior warden of St. Thomas, said the idea for the Community Garden came about last year
after what used to be the rector’s house was torn down, leaving a vacant lot next to the church.
Anderson, who oversees the garden, said the national church has adopted the United Nations’ millennial goals, which include eradicating hunger and combating HIV/AIDS. But the objective of the Community Garden is nothing new for St. Thomas.
"This is a natural extension of something this church has been doing for 25 years," Anderson said.
For more information about the visit, go to www.thedoubter.org.
E-mail wright@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition April 25, 2008.
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