c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Episcopalians, those Christians who have historically tried to span the structural and theological gulf between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, have come to a moment in their life as a church where they face some hard decisions about their future.

Can they continue as a church under the control of bishops, or will power be centralized in congregations?

Will they return the church to a more limited, pre-1940s model for the office of presiding bishop and hire an executive director to run the day-to-day operations of the denomination?

Will they approve”same-sex marriages”as one proposal from the left wing suggests? Or will they embrace proposals from the right wing to reaffirm conventional beliefs about marriage and sexuality?

And, if things don’t go their way, will some bishops seek to rally their dioceses to pull out of the church?

The church’s policy-making General Convention gathering July 16-25 in Philadelphia will weigh these and other questions as it also elects a new presiding bishop, the person who will _ perhaps _ steer its direction for the next nine years.

As Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning steps down and his replacement is elected July 21 by the church’s House of Bishops, however, the new leader may face a sharply altered church structure.

Possible changes ahead for the denomination are nestled in 51 proposals for structural change that will be presented by the denomination’s Standing Committee on the Structure of the Church.

Among those structural proposals, for example, is a recommendation requiring local bishops to give up their control over selecting new priests to local congregations.

While the structural issues may have a more longstanding impact on the church, the General Convention will also face a barrage of controversial issues that are certain to make the 2.5 million-member denomination a continued center of controversy.

Among the high-profile proposals awaiting the Episcopalians are:

_ Same-sex marriages. A 15-page report by the Standing Liturgical Commission and the theology committee of the House of Bishops offers delegates a series of options, ranging from traditional insistence on heterosexual marriage to a rite that blesses same-sex relationships.

_ Adulterous priests. Deputies will weigh a proposal to prohibit clergy from sexual relations outside of marriage.

_ Women priests. In an effort to finally put to rest an issue pitting traditionalists against modernists since the church authorized women’s ordination in 1976, delegates will be asked to no longer allow bishops opposed to women priests to prevent them from serving churches in their dioceses.

_ Concordat with Lutherans. In the works for decades, the Concordat between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America would move the two churches closer to unity by instituting interchangeability of ordained clergy and establishing joint participation in the ordination of new bishops.

Hovering in the background at the convention and shadowing all of the decisions the two Houses _ the House of Bishops, made up of some 225 bishops, and the House Deputies, which is made up of 900 clergy and laity _ is a rising distrust of the church.

Much of that distrust has focused on money matters, the embezzlement of $2.2 million from the church by its former treasurer, Ellen F. Cooke. Even though Cooke currently is serving a five-year sentence for the theft and much of the money has been recovered, the distrust of the national church continues.

A small organization, called the Trust Group, has demanded a full audit of the church’s 200 trusts, totaling $200 million. The group is not satisfied with an Executive Council decision to conduct its own audit, which is expected to be completed shortly before the General Convention convenes.

The church’s uncertain future, including what role the presiding bishop will have in the church, caused two possible candidates for Browning’s post _ Bishops Peter J. Lee of the diocese of Virginia and Roger White of the diocese of Milwaukee _ to pull out of the election.

Five candidates remain in the running: Bishops Frank Griswold of Chicago, Robert Rowley Jr. of Northwestern Pennsylvania; Richard Shimpfky of El Caminio Real (Calif.); Don Wimberly of Kentucky; and Herbert Thompson of Southern Ohio.

Episcopalians, who since the republic was founded, have played a significant role in the nation’s leadership, often disproportionate to their numbers. In recent decades, however, both their numbers and their influence have shrunk, forcing church leaders to rethink the church’s structure and organization.

Structural decisions awaiting the convention in Philadelphia come in the form of resolutions that will mandate a less powerful and less “hands on” presiding bishop; a greater role for the president of the House of Deputies; increased responsibilities for the church’s interim Executive Council; and the hiring of a CEO-type executive director for the church center in New York.

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The proposed changes have their genesis in a 1994 “Shaping Our Future” symposium in St. Louis. There, 1,000 Episcopalians from across the nation gathered to address the church’s consistent drop in membership, while evangelical churches grew.

At that meeting, the solution seemed simple: restructure the church into one more enticing to baby boomers.

In addition to the church addressing the needs of local congregations, the symposium suggested the church be turned upside down by changing the role of the presiding bishop. A strong call was made for a return to the days when the head of the church also was primarily in charge of a local diocese.

That kind of writing has been on the wall for some time, according to Bishop Heath Light, a former member of the presiding bishop’s Committee on Advice.

Said Light, who recently retired as head of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia:”The church has become increasingly localized. The money has not been flowing to the national church and has been used more for local ministries.” In one sense, he said, that isn’t bad because it involves the laity in hands-on ministry. But, he added, it also weakens the ability of the national church to respond to global needs. Meanwhile independent missionary groups have sprung up, each representing its own view that may not reflect that of the overall church, he said.

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The Episcopal Church _ like its mother, the Anglican Communion _ tries to be something of a big tent, allowing such diverse views as conservative evangelicalism on one end and radical liberalism on the other. Such a church, according to historians, can be fragile, always threatening to pull apart. But others say its historic tolerance of diversity has been its strength.

Nevertheless, the stretching of the tent’s fabric may be at a tearing point.

MJP END BRIGGS