The Standing Committee of the Diocese of California voted recently to withhold consent to the Rev. Kevin G. Thew Forrester as bishop of Northern Michigan. The vote was close, according to diocesan spokesman Sean McConnell.

California is the 57th standing committee to withhold consent from Thew Forrester. Twenty-nine have given consent and 25 either haven’t voted or haven’t revealed their votes, according to a survey by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Diocese, one of 110 scattered across the U.S., Caribbean, Latin America and Asia, includes San Francisco and much of the Bay Area.

The California decision is another blow to the chances of Thew Forrester, who has been criticized for rewriting the Episcopal Church’s baptismal covenant, the Apostles’ Creed and other passages in the Book of Common Prayer to more closely reflect his own theological and liturgical preferences. Even if he receives support from all of the remaining 25 standing committes, he would lose by a vote of 57 to 54.

In order to win, he will need to convince some of the standing committees to change their votes. He has until July 19 to do so.

The California vote has been criticized by a San Francisco priest, Father John Kirkley, who is urging his own standing committee to reconsider their vote. He says a loss by Thew Forrester “could have a chilling effect withholding consent might have on the election of future bishops.”

“I am concerned that withholding consent to Father Forrester’s election represents a fear of the religious “other” and a fear of being branded a heretic, fears which undermine the very kind of theological, liturgical and interfaith work with which bishops must be engaged to exercise authentic oversight (seeing over or seeing the whole),” he writes in a letter posted online.

Of California’s six Episcopal dioceses, only the Standing Committee of San Joaquin supported Thew Forrester.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Mark Harris, a member of the denomination’s Executive Council is also lamenting Thew Forrester’s apparent defeat.

He criticizes conservatives who voted no, liberals who voted no, the “mob” that he says unfairly attacked the bishop-elect, the “gnawing dogs of pseudo-orthodoxy”, “fear merchants” and the press.

“The way in which Forrester was drawn and quartered by the media and by layered digging is a blot on all of us, and is yet another reason to do in the idea that we should only ordain those persons as bishops whose manner of life is unassailable out there in the cruel world of idiocy passing as orthodoxy.

“Shame on us all,” Harris writes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.