The Episcopal bishop whose acquittal in a church “heresy” trial
15 years ago ignited the ongoing schism within the U.S. Episcopal
Church and the global Anglican Communion died last week in
Pittsburgh.
Bishop Walter Righter, 87, set off a firestorm of
controversy when he ordained an openly non-celibate homosexual man
to the Episcopal deaconate in 1990. His heresy trial
concluded in 1996 with a 7-1 dismissal of charges by a panel of
fellow bishops. The episode further stoked disputes over scriptural
authority and sexual ethics within America’s once
historically most prestigious Mainline denomination.
“I look around the Episcopal Church today where there are
no impediments to the ordination of gay or lesbian members.… None
of that would have happened without Bishop Righter’s leadership,”
pronounced a prominent pro-gay rights California priest in a
Righter
obituary. “When the history of the movement for the full
inclusion of the LGBT community in our church is written, there is
no doubt that Walter Righter will be one of its great
heroes.”
At the time of his well-publicized trial, Bishop Righter
had told one newspaper: “I think we’re making too much out of the
bedroom.”
Like many liberal prelates who fancy their supposed
boldness in challenging Christian orthodoxy even as they embrace a
far more suffocating secular liberal orthodoxy, Righter was proud
of his “heresy” charges. He reportedly introduced himself at the
trial as “Walter Righter, the heretic,” while his beaming wife’s
name tag unabashedly declared “heretic’s wife.”
The complaint against Righter was brought by 10
conservative Episcopal bishops who, at the time of the verdict,
seemed surprised and unprepared for the almost inevitable victory
for sexual revolution within the Episcopal Church. Liberal
skepticism of biblical authority, the virgin birth, and bodily
resurrection of Christ, and other historic doctrines had swelled
within the Episcopal Church’s upper reaches for many decades prior
to the Righter trial. Traditionalists had long complained about
enthroned revisionism but never fully effectively organized to
arrest, much less roll back, its captivity of the denomination’s
seminaries, agencies, and ruling councils. Righter’s court in 1996
ruled that Episcopalianism had no core doctrine about homosexual
behavior. But it may as well have ruled that the denomination had
no essential teaching except for devoted adherence to America’s
liberal secular fads.
The twice-divorced Righter’s ordination of Barry Stopfel,
who was living “in a sexual partnership” with another man, would
ultimately lay the groundwork for the consecration of the church’s
first openly partnered homosexual bishop, Gene Robinson, in
2003.
In backing Righter, the church court’s majority wrote that
Episcopalian “core doctrine,” such as proclaiming Jesus Christ’s
divinity, contained nothing barring a bishop from ordaining a
homosexual as a deacon or priest. Of course, the polemical New
Jersey bishop for whom Righter then worked, Bishop John Shelby
Spong, was long since infamous for denying Christ’s deity, or at
least reinterpreting it as merely metaphorical window dressing.
Spong himself never faced a heresy trial, and conservative bishops
probably wanted to deny the media-hungry Spong the pleasure of such
a spotlight.
Righter was neither the first Episcopal Church bishop in
recent decades charged with heresy nor the first bishop to ordain a
non-celibate homosexual. A similar heresy trial charging California
Bishop James Pike was narrowly averted on three separate occasions
in the 1960s, as the bishop had publicly rejected the virgin birth
and other Christian teachings. The failure of other bishops to
remove Pike until his 1969 resignation is also seen as a milestone
in the Episcopal Church’s move from orthodoxy.
In 1989, Newark Bishop John Shelby Spong had ordained
another active homosexual, Robert Williams, which led the Episcopal
Church’s General Convention to “disassociate” itself from Spong’s
action. The Episcopal Church’s statute on limitations had expired
on Spong by the time of Righter’s trial. Williams, who was
HIV-positive, later died weakened from AIDS. Of course, Spong
continued to ordain actively and openly homosexual priests while
forming a second career around his rejection of traditional
Christianity through initially provocative but ultimately tiresome
revisionist books that championed a stale liberal
orthodoxy.
“Jack [Spong] and the presiding bishop [of the Episcopal
Church] agreed it was better for Jack not to ordain Barry Stopfel…
because he [Spong] was a lightning rod for controversy, and I was
kind of a safe person from Iowa, and not too many people paid
attention to me,” Righter once recounted to Religion News
Service.
Stopfel went on to become an Episcopal priest in 1991, but
the Righter trial took a toll on him and on his relationship with
another male priest. After a brief tenure as rector of a New Jersey
congregation, the homosexual clergyman departed to focus on writing
and speaking on the subject of sexual intimacy and God. ”How is it
that erotic touch can be filled with God, sexual touch can be holy
touch?” Stopfel
speculated in a 1999 New York Times
interview. “How there is healing redemption there. And
how it is that the church sees sexual intimacy as
anti-God.”
According to the Times, Stopfel was exploring
other ways of ministry outside of a parish. He especially wanted to
reach those who left the church because of its supposed inability
to address their questions on both theological and social issues.
”People are leaving the church in droves,” Stopfel said. ”I want
to start an independent ministry for people with serious questions
and who want to find a spiritual path. I believe the Episcopal
Church has the elasticity to do this.”
Righter’s beginnings in the priesthood did not initially
showcase theological “elasticity.” The future bishop ministered at
conservative congregations near Pittsburgh, which remains an
outpost of conservative Anglicanism. He served from 1972 to 1988 as
diocesan bishop in Iowa, relocating to Newark for his 1989-1991
tenure under Spong and later returning to Southwestern Pennsylvania
in retirement.
“Bishop Righter is one of the giants on whose shoulders
gay and lesbian Christians stand,” openly homosexual New Hampshire
Bishop Gene Robinson told
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Calling Righter “a faithful and prophetic servant,”
Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
solemnly told
Episcopal News Service that the bishop “will be
remembered for his pastoral heart and his steadfast willingness to
help the church move beyond old prejudices into new possibilities.”
She did not mention how Righter’s trial eventually divided her
church in the U.S., estranged it from much of overseas Anglicanism,
and accelerated an already unsustainable membership
drain.
Righter was a World War II veteran who fought at the
Battle of the Bulge. Later he attended seminary at Yale. He
exemplified the public service and distinguished WASP ascendancy of
many Mainline Protestant elites, especially Episcopalians. Such men
for centuries either ran or inspired much of America until the
1960s and 1970s, when they sadly lost faith in many of the virtues
that ennobled their institutions. Their decline was a loss for
America. May Bishop Righter rest in peace, and may many learn from
his legacy.
