Episcopal leader hopes to mend rift

SAN JOSE — Anxiety crept into the priest's voice as he addressed the leader of his unsettled church.

Was she finding a way to bridge the widening rifts in the Episcopal Church and its parent Anglican Communion? he asked. Or was it an impasse?

Standing recently in the airy sanctuary of a small San Jose church, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori was direct, her low voice calm, as she offered her own, more nuanced view to the priests and lay leaders before her.

"I'm not sure it is a stalemate," she said. "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 had previously 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 U.S. 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 crystallized with the American church's decision in 2003 to consecrate an openly gay bishop.

Now parishes and dioceses within the Episcopal church also 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 country to take a final vote to sever its ties with the national church. At the center of the storm is Jefferts Schori, a Stanford University-trained 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.