A Renegade Bishop in California's Central Valley

The smallish Episcopal diocese of San Joaquin has gotten plenty of press recently -- largely because it is the first diocese to officially split with the national church. The split is largely the work of its 69 year old bishop, John David Schofield.

The LA Times has published today (Christmas Eve of all days) an interesting profile of this bishop. Having been bishop for two decades he has taken this already conservative diocese further to the right, or at least a recent diocesan convention vote would lead one to that observation. It will take time to discern the degree to which this is true. That is, how many congregations will actually leave with him. Word is that at least six will stay with the national church with others not yet sure. I still find it hard to believe that all but six of 47 congregations would be that conservative that they would break from the national church and align with a province in South America.

As expected the Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will declare the bishopric vacant and move to appoint a new bishop. In response Schofield has, according to Rebecca Trounson's article --

On Friday he replied that he considered the alignment with the Southern Cone temporary, "until such time as the Episcopal Church repents."

That sounds a lot like the Nonjurors of old -- a group of hard line Divine Right Monarchists who declared that they would keep the first burning until the larger church returned to its senses and joined them. I doubt that this will happen any time soon. That is in large part because it's unlikely that the larger church will repent of its decisions to ordain women or pull back from ordaining gays and lesbians. Both of those barriers have been broken.