Fighting for his vision of the Episcopal church

By David O'Reilly

July 11, 2000 Web posted at: 1:19 PM EDT (1719 GMT)

In this story: Will to win "Confident we are pleasing God" RELATED STORIES

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Inquirer) -- Years of bearing burdens will take a toll on a man's back, and some days the pain is too much for the Rev. David Moyer.

So, the conservative, pipe-smoking rector of Rosemont's Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd eases out of his dignified leather chair, kneels on the Persian rug in his wood-paneled office - and rolls onto his back.

But respite is brief for this 49-year-old churchman, on a crusade to rescue the 2.4-million member Episcopal Church USA from what he calls its "false teachers" - liberal bishops and clergy - while he labors to bring the fractious conservative movement together.

Opposed to women's ordination since his seminary days, and a witness against gay ordinations since the mid-1980s, Father Moyer is president of Forward in Faith North America, whose 19,000 members nationwide compose the largest body of traditionalists within the Episcopal Church USA. Moyer also opposed last weekend's decision in Denver to form a historic alliance between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Every day he wrestles with the question of schism.

"Do we stay and fight for the soul of the church?" he wondered during a recent interview. "Or do we just go, and leave it to the pirates?"

He "cannot capitulate" on his principles, he insisted. "I would fear for my soul."

But what good would it do, he wondered, to lead Forward in Faith's membership out of the Episcopal Church? They would lose their "moral voice" within the larger church and likely "disappear into obscurity" like the 30 other conservative synods and rites that have splintered off the main church in recent years.

"When I look at them, I think: 'Boy, if all these people had stayed, we'd have a mighty army!' " said Father Moyer. "And I think: 'Maybe we can throw the pirates off, and bring about redemption.' "

Affable in conversation, he is nonetheless a tenacious man with a will to win. A competitive bicyclist, he scored the best masters' time in the grueling 1996 Manayunk hill climb. He now races sports cars, behind the wheel of a bright red Dodge Viper.

So zealous is he that he has refused to recognize the authority of the "radical" bishop of Pennsylvania, the Rev. Charles E. Bennison, and even barred him from preaching at Good Shepherd. "He's dangerous to the church!" Father Moyer insisted.

Bishop Bennison, who endorses the ordination of women and of homosexuals in committed relationships, has responded by threatening to defrock Father Moyer if he keeps up his blockade, "although I hope it never comes to that," the bishop said in a recent interview.

"We're trying to maintain the unity of the diocese, trying to build an open and diverse community that includes gay and lesbian people."

Six other traditionalist parishes in the four-county diocese also refuse to recognize his authority because of his views on homosexuality and women's ordination: All Saints Church in Wynnewood; Church of the Atonement in Morton; Church of the Redemption in Southampton; St. James the Less in East Falls; St. John's in Huntingdon Valley; and St. Luke's in Newtown.

Their rectors are violating their ordination vows by barring him, said Bishop Bennison, who became diocesan bishop here three years ago. "I hope the time will not come that I have to exercise ecclesiastical discipline. . . . It grieves me greatly that they are choosing not to participate in the fellowship of the diocese."

But Father Moyer - who last year bused his confirmation class to Bethlehem, Pa., where another bishop confirmed them - replies that if he is someday defrocked for his defiance, "So be it."

"Rita, my wife, told me that if we have to move out of the rectory and into a Winnebago, it's OK with her. Me, too. But they'll have to take me out of here in handcuffs."

Some women's- and gay-rights advocates have branded him a "fundamentalist," a "homophobe" and a "misogynist," which he denies, noting that his son's godfather is gay and his parish has an active AIDS ministry in Africa. His dogmatic stances "come instead from my understanding of the doctrines of the church," he insists, adding that he is "confident we are pleasing God by upholding the gospel."

Father Moyer grew up in a "broad" Episcopal parish in Somerville, N.J., but by the time he entered seminary he was attracted to the "high" style of Episcopal liturgy and worship, with its Roman Catholic-style vestments, signs of the Cross, and daily Mass. A pair of rosary beads hangs from the thermostat in his office.

An Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, he is emphatically Father Moyer - not the less formal "Reverend" and definitely not "Mister" - and he believes that "we as Anglicans don't have the right to change the faith and order of the church . . . or to teach anything unless it's taught by Scripture."

But he said with a sigh that "sometimes it feels like a losing battle."

In 1976 the Episcopal Church authorized the ordination of female priests, overriding the traditionalists' objection that if Jesus had wanted female priests, He would have chosen female disciples.

Then, at its triennial convention in Philadelphia three years ago, the church extended health benefits to domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees, upheld a church court decision that nothing in canon law bars gay and lesbian ordinations, and ordered five holdout dioceses to begin ordaining and employing female clergy - regardless of the local bishops' views on the matter.

The Philadelphia convention also came within one vote of authorizing creation of a blessing rite for same-sex unions.

Incensed but not surprised, 400 traditionalists gathered immediately afterward at Father Moyer's stately, stone church for their own convention.

There, on July 28, 1997, they voted to create a separate national "province" within the Episcopal Church that would consecrate its own bishops who would administer to "orthodox" parishes requesting oversight.

But as the main church concludes its 73d convention this week in Denver, the conservatives' province is still unborn.

Although many of the 34 national churches in the worldwide Anglican communion applaud Forward in Faith's strict reading of Scripture and its condemnation of homosexual activity, none will agree to recognize the proposed province as a national church.

The conservative movement was further confounded in January when two African archbishops unexpectedly consecrated two American priests to serve as "missionary bishops" to conservative parishes in the United States. Most of the world's Anglican primates pronounced the consecrations as invalid, and few parishes signed on.

"Everybody is confused and unhappy except maybe the people driving the locomotive of the Episcopal Church, who believe they have the authority to go wherever they want," according to Forward in Faith's spokesman, Bill Murchison of Dallas, Texas.

The Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Despite all the discouragements, Father Moyer professes confidence that he and the Episcopal conservatives will one day reclaim their church - or win international Anglican recognition as the "faithful remnant."

"I feel I've been put in this maelstrom to be a light to the world - to, with the Lord's help, bring about redemption," he said. "We are going to be what we must be, cost what it may, however long it takes."

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