BISHOP OF ALABAMA TO RETIRE
IN 2020, CALLS FOR COADJUTOR
The bishop of Alabama, the Rt. Rev. "Kee" Sloan, announced today that he will be retiring as diocesan bishop at the end of 2020. He called for the election of a bishop coadjutor to succeed him.
The diocese of Alabama standing committee will soon meet with the Rt. Rev. Todd Ousley, of the office of pastoral development. The standing committee will appoint a search committee to conduct a search and recommend candidates for the position of bishop coadjutor.
The diocese of Alabama has been blessed to have had great leadership, particularly in the last few decades. Sloan and his predecessor, Henry N. Parsley, were outstanding leaders in the diocese and the broader church. Parsley barely lost out to Katharine Jefferts Schori in the election of presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006. The bishops have steered the diocese on a moderate course, and one absolutely loyal to the national church.
On the whole, Alabama has been strongly attached to the national church. However, there have been pockets of resistance and a few breakaway congregations have formed but none that required contentious litigation. To be sure, Alabama has contributed notable schismatic leaders over the years. The pioneer of schism in South Carolina, Chuck Murphy, came from Alabama, as did Marcus Robertson, the one-time rector of Christ Church in Savannah. After he lost in the state supreme court, Robertson led a move out to form an Anglican church in Savannah.
At present, the center of criticism of the national church in the diocese of Alabama is located in Cathedral Church of the Advent, in Birmingham, where the dean is Andrew Pearson, who went to Advent from St. Helena's in Beaufort where he served under Jeff Miller. Pearson was involved in the diocesan conventions in SC as the meetings passed resolutions distancing the diocese from the national church. He moved to Alabama before the break in 2012, thus retaining his holy orders in TEC. The relationship between Advent and the rest of the diocese of Alabama would best be described as cautiously distant. Advent apparently has adopted a highly evangelical/fundamentalist bent not characteristic of most of the rest of the diocese. In the past, Pearson has been a vocal critic the diocese's support of the national church. He also participated in last year's Anglican conference at Samford University, in Birmingham, which turned out to be, unsurprisingly, quite critical of TEC. The Samford school of theology has set up a program for the training of non-Episcopal "Anglican" clergy. With this, the schismatics have made a toehold in Alabama. So far, however, the clergy of Advent have assured everyone they are part and parcel of the Episcopal Church. One may wonder at how happy that bond may be.
At present, the center of criticism of the national church in the diocese of Alabama is located in Cathedral Church of the Advent, in Birmingham, where the dean is Andrew Pearson, who went to Advent from St. Helena's in Beaufort where he served under Jeff Miller. Pearson was involved in the diocesan conventions in SC as the meetings passed resolutions distancing the diocese from the national church. He moved to Alabama before the break in 2012, thus retaining his holy orders in TEC. The relationship between Advent and the rest of the diocese of Alabama would best be described as cautiously distant. Advent apparently has adopted a highly evangelical/fundamentalist bent not characteristic of most of the rest of the diocese. In the past, Pearson has been a vocal critic the diocese's support of the national church. He also participated in last year's Anglican conference at Samford University, in Birmingham, which turned out to be, unsurprisingly, quite critical of TEC. The Samford school of theology has set up a program for the training of non-Episcopal "Anglican" clergy. With this, the schismatics have made a toehold in Alabama. So far, however, the clergy of Advent have assured everyone they are part and parcel of the Episcopal Church. One may wonder at how happy that bond may be.
It is absolutely imperative that the new search committee in the diocese of Alabama be on the same page as the leaders of the diocese in the past few decades. Loyalty to the national church should be a given among the committee. In South Carolina, Bishop Salmon set up a search committee in 2005 that was guaranteed to be controlled by the clergy of the diocese. By that point the clergy were overwhelmingly critical of the national church. Sure enough, dissatisfied with fifty candidates, the committee called on Mark Lawrence, a man who had been strongly critical of the national church to make himself a candidate. Three months later, he was elected bishop. Never let it be said that search committees are not important. The one in SC made all the difference. Those twelve people were, arguably, the ones who put Lawrence in office.
The schismatic movement in the Episcopal Church has declined markedly. The Bishop Love episode demonstrates this. Love has challenged the church but has remained loyal to it. There is no sign that he is moving to break away from the church. However, there is still a significant amount of hostility across the church to its policies of human rights, particularly for equality and inclusion of gays. Dissension is declining, but it is still there and is still a force to be reckoned with.
The new search committee in Alabama would do well to study the five recent schisms in the Episcopal Church, especially the one in South Carolina. The lessons are there in stark reality.
