Fr Jack Barker's Formation As An Anglican Priest

In his biography, included in this post at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, Fr Barker for the first time goes into detail on his career in Anglican seminaries. A key passage is:

Born in 1941 in South Dakota and raised in southern California. A graduate of Hawthorne High School with highest honors. Bachelor’s in Physics from the College of Letters and Science at U.C.L.A. in 1963. He is trained in classical piano.

Under the sponsorship of a South African Anglican bishop, he attended Anglican Seminary at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England beginning in 1963.

Based on research by my regular correspondent, this "South African bishop" can only be Edward Crowther. According to Wikipedia,

Crowther taught criminal and constitutional law at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1952-55. He was ordained deacon in 1956 and priest the following year, serving as curate at St. Philip and St. James' Church, Oxford, in 1956-58. After a preaching tour in the United States and a period (1959–64) as a college chaplain at the University of California, Los Angeles, he became Dean of St Cyprian’s Cathedral, Kimberley in South Africa in September 1964,[4][5] and then its Diocesan Bishop in 1965. Crowther was consecrated bishop in Cape Town on November 14, and he was formally enthroned in St. Cyprian's Cathedral on November 29, 1965. Two years later he was expelled from the country for his opposition to apartheid. In 1970 he returned to California as Assistant Bishop and obtained a doctorate.

A puzzling start to his career, teaching law at Oxford, then a detour into the priesthood, but after only a few years, he's off to the US on a "preaching tour". Famous for being well known, it would appear, possibly an Oxonian of a certain sort, promoted by the same media networks who promoted his contemporary Malcolm Boyd.

But Crowther would have been college chaplain at UCLA while Barker was an undergraduate there. The Wikipedia article is also incomplete; following his expulsion from South Africa in 1967, this book review places Crowther at California's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in 1968.

James Pike resigned as Episcopal Bishop of California in 1966 under threat of a heresy trial and went to the same Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions that year, remaining until his death in 1969. He and Crowther shared similar very liberal positions regarding the Church. Following a reorganization of the Center in 1969, many associates departed, and In 1969, he was made head of an Episcopalian non-profit, apparently a holding pattern. Crowther was installed as an Assistant Bishop of California, Pike's former diocese, in late 1971.

However, Fr Barker doesn't refer to the controversies Crowther himself stirred up in South Africa, though clearly if Crowther was expelled, Barker wouldn't be able to be ordained to the priesthood there. Barker's version skims over this:

Because of the political realities in South Africa at the time it was recommended that he return to Los Angeles rather than be ordained and work in the Anglican Church in the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman.

Placed in charge of an Episcopalian non-profit in Washington in 1969, where he replaced Paul Moore Jr, Crowther continued to be well-connected and influential in Episcopal circles. One tantalizing question is whether Bp Crowther was able to influence the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles to find a placement for his protégé Barker, though Barker doesn't seem to have made much progress toward an MDiv at Bloy House.

But every indication we have from the time, including the book review linked above for Where Religion Gets Lost in the Church, suggests that Crowther was closely aligned with James Pike, his sometime colleague in Santa Barbara. And Pike continued to have sympathy from the liberal side of TEC.

The 1968 review of Crowther's book linked above concludes, "In his appeal for an emancipated lay apostolate, for another look at Christian teaching on human sexual relationships, and for a pastoral link with the behavioral sciences, Bp Crowther shows us what his hopes and frustrations are." So it's hard to avoid thinking that Fr Barker was mentored throughout his extended and desultory priestly formation by an extremely liberal fellow-traveler and colleague of James Pike, a bête noire of conservative Anglicans, who may well have secured for him his original posting to St Mary of the Angels.

But here's a conundrum. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles was at that time and continues to be one of the most liberal in the US. It's hard to avoid thinking the diocese would have been happy with Barker, who must have seemed like a good fit, and indeed, his continued lack of progress toward an MDiv was probably not seen as an impediment if he had someone like Crowther, now again a bishop in the US, on his side. But only six years later, Barker becomes a hotheaded leader of the secessionist, conservative wing of TEC, and his account is that

From the beginning at St. Mary’s he became involved with the American Church Union (ACU) which was under the direction of its famous Executive Director Rev. Canon Albert Julius DuBois, affectionately known as “Mr. Catholic” in the Episcopal Church.

Huh? Barker's been in with guys for whom women's ordination would seem to be the least of a long list of desirable "reforms", but suddenly he's cozied up to Mr Catholic? Something's off here. My regular correspondent offers one theory:

I am not surprised at Fr Barker’s apparent volte-face. My observation is that a certain kind of clergyman can be quite liberal on many questions, but takes a very firm stand against any suggestion that the Church is not at heart a boys’ club. That is personally threatening in a way that other doctrinal questions are not.

I lived in LA in 1977, when the hyped-up St Mary of the Angels drama was a regular feature on the local TV news. The parish spokeswoman, Mrs Brandt, was out in front, insisting that by ordaining women, The Episcopal Church was destroying the parish's "Catholicity". This struck me, a non-churchgoer still a nominal Presbyterian, as problematic at the time. in hindsight, it was utterly meaningless, yet it was apparently the official position of Fr Barker and the parish. Doesn't seem like Barker had made much progress at Bloy House, huh?

I would estimate that it was an incoherent Ich kann nicht anders stance not all that far from the James Pike deny-the-Trinity school of Episcopalianism, and Barker was reveling in his 15 minutes of fame. Thanks to the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, he gets to reprise it now. But there's more to cover in what Barker leaves out of his newest account.