US:A woman presides over the US Episcopal Church as tension rises over homosexuality, writes Rebecca Trounson, San Jose, California
Anxiety crept into the priest's voice as he inquired of the leader of his unsettled church: could she find any way to bridge the widening rifts in the Episcopal Church or was it an impasse?
Standing in the airy sanctuary of a small San Jose church on a recent morning, the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori was direct, her low voice calm, as she offered her more nuanced view to the priests and lay leaders.
"I'm not sure it is a stalemate," she said quietly. "I think this church and others may just be becoming clearer about who they are." And she reminded her audience that small groups of believers previously had left both the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican fellowship, and both entities survived.
Perhaps, Jefferts Schori said, if all sides in the current debate over sexuality and Scripture could "hold their truths more lightly", they might yet find a way forward together.
"I believe we only know the fullness of God's truth at the end of time," she said. "And in the meantime, we have to be careful about being so sure that we understand it all."
The first woman to be elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori (53) is leading her flock at a pivotal and, for many in the church, profoundly uneasy time.
The influential, liberal-leaning church, the US branch of Anglicanism, is facing the possibility of a break with the worldwide Anglican communion, the result of long-standing tensions over homosexuality and scriptural interpretation that crystallised with the American church's decision in 2003 to consecrate an openly gay bishop.
Now parishes and entire dioceses within the Episcopal Church are threatening to go their own way. Four congregations have voted to pull out of the diocese of Los Angeles.
Next month, the Fresno-based San Joaquin diocese could become the first in the US to take a final vote to sever its ties with the national church. At the centre of the storm is Jefferts Schori, a former oceanographer and licensed pilot who became an Episcopal priest in 1994, when she was 40. Her election in June 2006 as the 26th presiding bishop of the 2.4 million-member church was hailed as a breakthrough, both for women and for full inclusion for gays and lesbians, which she supports.
In her first year, Jefferts Schori, a tall, slender woman with a thoughtful manner and resonant voice, has won praise from many for her efforts to hold the fractious church together and keep it, at least so far, within the 77 million-member Anglican communion.
In October, leaders of Anglicans overseas responded largely positively to pledges from the Episcopal Church to "exercise restraint" in consecrating more gay bishops and to refrain from authorising official blessings for same-sex couples.
On her recent visit to northern California, Jefferts Schori repeatedly urged Episcopalians to look beyond the issues that divide them and focus on what she said should be the church's main mission, ministering to people in need. She also asked them to reach out to one another and be patient as the church passes through an arduous time.
"She's clear-thinking, decisive and unafraid, absolutely unafraid," said Rev Ian Douglas, professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Episcopal Church's executive council. "She is really the kind of person we need right now."
But some of Jefferts Schori's efforts, in particular her decisions to get tough with parishes and dioceses that are attempting to leave the Episcopal Church and trying to take church buildings and other property with them, have drawn criticism.
In a November 12th letter, for instance, Rev Jack Iker, the conservative bishop of the Fort Worth diocese in Texas, accused her of misusing her office and engaging in "aggressive, dictatorial posturing". Jefferts Schori had warned Iker in a letter earlier this month that he could face church discipline if he continued to back proposals that would lead his diocese away from the national church.
Nonetheless, on Saturday representatives from Fort Worth approved constitutional amendments that are the first steps toward that departure.
"She's playing hardball, and that's not going down very well, in this country or in the communion," said Canon Kendall Harmon, a leading church traditionalist from South Carolina who runs a popular Episcopal blog.
But Jefferts Schori explains her strategy in different terms. In her November 9th meeting with some 100 leaders of the El Camino Real diocese, she said she believed strongly in reaching out and listening to Episcopalians frustrated by what they see as the church's too liberal direction.
"I think there are many in our church who feel beleaguered, and often they don't hear from other parts of the church that they, too, are beloved," the bishop said during the conversation with diocesan leaders in the sanctuary of St Stephen's in the Field Church.
"If we can ratchet it down a little, we may find a way to live together even if we don't agree."
Jefferts Schori said it pained her that some on both ends of the theological spectrum seemed no longer able, or willing, to discuss their differences - and this in a church with a long history of tolerance for diversity.
"I think the centre of the church has heard the message," she said. "But it's more of a struggle for people on the edge of the progressive part and the edge of the more conservative part. Both believe in utter faithfulness that they're right . . . and there's less patience that God will work all things out in the end."