Michigan: After split, Anglican church finds its way

Editor's Note: I've noticed lately in stories like this that writers are using the word "defection" in talking of these splits. I believe that this is a loaded and pejorative term.


By NICHOLAS DESHAIS
Times Herald

LEXINGTON- When the faithful gather on Sunday behind Bush's Restaurant to hear the Rev. Richard Dalton speak, they are acting as a brand-new church as well as a very old one.

The congregants were, until three years ago, all Episcopalians, members of the former Trinity Episcopal Church. But now, after splitting from that church, they consider themselves Anglicans, a faith that can trace its history to the sixth century.

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A lot of people felt that we were the splinter group. We feel that the Episcopal church left us," said Finola Hewitt, a member of the new Christ the King Anglican Church.

While watching the congregation at Christ the King, one could hardly suspect the roiling tensions, defections and splintering factions within the Episcopal church.

Like a lightning-struck tree, the international Anglican church, which the Episcopals are part of, is splitting into irreconcilable branches.

"We're not looking much toward the Western church for leadership," Dalton said. "We're looking to the third world."

The small Christ the King church, along with about a dozen others in Michigan, is part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, which defected from the Episcopal church to join with the church of Nigeria more than three years ago.

These Michiganders now follow the leadership of Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. Akinola hews to a much more conservative view of Anglicism, and for some Americans, this brand of faith matches their own.

The trouble began in 2003 when the Episcolpalian Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson, a gay man, as its ninth bishop. It was the first time an openly gay man was ordained, and some churchgoers felt this went against church teaching.

Robinson's ordination started what has come to be known as the Anglican realignment.

"There are about eight factions that broke away from the Episcopal church," said Dr. Dennis Smallwood, who attends the Lexington church.

Smallwood recently retired from his various jobs a public health director in all the Thumb counties.

Church secretary Janet Pigeon argued people in the movement are not judging others but doing what "God wants, not what we want to do."

"We're trying to hold to the Scripture," said Pigeon, 70, of Lexington. "We need to follow the Word."