The January 1977 Mass Exit

The timing of the jointly choreographed exit of four Los Angeles-area parishes and one in Nevada from TEC raises important questions. Let's look at a timeline:

• April 1976: Clark Tea is signatory to an open letter to all TEC diocesan bishops objecting to the election of John Shelby Spong as bishop coadjutor of Newark, NJ.
• April 1976: A public letter from the Anglo-Catholic and conservative American Church Union to the bishops of TEC asserts that Canon Albert J DuBois

  does not advocate and has never advocated schism or any other kind of separation. Specifically -- and quite contrary to an erroneous account in the January issue of The Canadian Churchman -- he did not advocate schism in an address to the Council for the Faith in Toronto on November 22, 1975, nor did he state that legal steps were being taken to ensure a "continuing" Episcopal Church if the ordination of women were "authorized" by General Convention.

• September 1976:The TEC general convention in Minneapolis authorizes the ordination of women.
• September 1976: DuBois and Frs WT StJohn Brown and Jack Barker publish a newsletter during the convention that includes a "plan of action" for dissenting parishes to leave TEC.
• September or October 1976: Albert DuBois travels to Rome, having met with sympathetic Catholic clergy during the Minneapolis convention and has unspecified discussions with Catholics in Rome.
• November 1976: Jack D Barker as chairman of ACU's Policy and Planning Committee issues a statement that the ACU has "absolutely rejected" the general convention's decision to ordain women. Clark Tea, secretary of the committee, is noted as sitting at the head table.
• January 23, 1977: St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, St Matthias Sun Valley, Church of Our Saviour Los Angeles, Holy Apostles Glendale, and St Bartholomew's Boulder City, NV leave TEC.

Several things strike me. One is that, within the press releases from TEC covering these events, it becomes clear that the American Church Union was feeling less and less comfortable with the actions of DuBois, Barker, Brown, and Tea, to the point that they renamed their newsletter during the September general convention to distance themselves from the ACU. The November release suggests some felt Barker's statement was hotheaded at best.

Another issue is that I can find no reference to either Brown or Barker having an MDiv at the time they were ordained Episcopal priests. Both Brown and Barker became rectors of parishes in unusual circumstances. Normally when a rector position becomes vacant, the vestry notifies the bishop, who appoints an "interim rector" or a "priest in charge" subject to the bishop's authority. The vestry then works with the diocese to identify the parish's profile and locate candidates who best suit its needs. This process can easily take a year or longer. The vestry then selects a rector "with the assent of the bishop".

Naturally in the normal course, the bishop has a good deal of input in the process. However, according to Fr Kelley, even when St Mary of the Angels was part of the TEC diocese, it never trusted the bishop, and in the cases of the second rector, Fr Jordan, and the third, Fr Barker, the vestry hired existing curates as rector directly without going through the diocese. As a practical matter, the parish was "continuing" before there was a "continuing" movement.

One question that comes into my mind is whether Frs Barker and Brown knew each other before Brown wound up at St Matthias Sun Valley, and given the proximity of the parishes, whether Barker had any influence on its hiring Brown, especially if Brown was in some sort of extremity in the circumstances under which he left the rector's position at St Luke's Evanston.

Another question is how much the parishioners at both St Matthias and St Mary of the Angels were told of the agenda Barker and Brown had in becoming Catholic as of early 1977. This could well apply to Tea in Boulder City as well. The reporter who followed up on the 1977 cases for the Long Beach Press Telegram in 2005 reached some former parishioners at St Matthias and got these reactions to the 1977 events:

Neil Paquin was a St. Matthias congregant in the '70s and deeply involved with the church. He said beyond the money the parish spent, the greatest toll was to his relationship with the clergy.

"Most of us really put our hearts and souls into it," Paquin said, "which I will never do again to any church. I wouldn't put my faith in a priest or minister or any man. That's where I stand now."

Paquin and Ruth Zuber are among former congregants who believe their clergy had ulterior motives in seceding from the church, although they agreed with the move at the time.

"The rector of our church seemed to lead us to Roman Catholicism," Zuber said. "That's not the way it was presented to us at first."

Paquin puts it in more stark terms.

"(Brown) sold us down the river," Paquin said. "He kept telling us he was doing it for the Anglican church."

A visitor here gave a similar account several years ago:

[A] group called themselves "St. Mary's in Exile," under Senior Warden Walter Kressel. (We were introduced to Anglo Catholicism through "St. Mary's in Exile," via their ads in the L.A. Times, but once we went to "the real St. Mary's," we never went back.) The "Exile" group was intimately involved in the law suit to get St. Mary's church property back into the hands of the Episcopal Church. They lost the case. Fr. Barker and his legal team prevailed (due to the way that Fr. Dodd, the founding priest, had written the legal papers regarding the property of St. Mary's).

The various published accounts of this period from Fr Barker have many gaps, sometimes omit critical information, and leave many unanswered questions. In particular, evidence continues to emerge that shows that Barker, Brown, and Tea were close and maintained contact up to the deaths of Brown and Tea, and it's hard not to think they had extensive contacts even before the events of 1976.

Any further information anyone might be able to provide will be most appreciated.