THE VICAR of a mission church in San Joaquin, California, that does not support the diocese’s decision to leave the Episcopal Church in the United States and affiliate with the Province of the Southern Cone found himself dismissed in front of his congregation when the Bishop of San Joaquin, the Rt Revd John-David Schofield, made a visitation on Sunday 23 December.
The Revd Fred Risard, Vicar of St Nicholas’s, Atwater, who abstained from the vote on disaffiliation, had written to the Bishop to tell him that the congregation had retained legal counsel in a belief that the vote had been illegal.
He asked the Bishop in what capacity he was carrying out the visitation. “Will you be coming as our Episcopal Bishop, having repented of your actions at diocesan convention, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation? Or will you be coming to worship as a visiting foreign bishop seeking to reconcile with your former congregation and vicar, and, following the mass, to join us as we take groceries and coats to the poor?”
Mr Risard told the weekly magazine The Living Church that he hoped a growing number of clergy in the diocese would “refuse to be intimidated by Bishop Schofield any longer”.
The Revd Michael Backlund, a visiting priest, recorded an eyewitness account of the visitation service, attended by an estimated 90 people. Mr Backlund described the service as “a rather reconciling and healing eucharist” — up to the point where Bishop Schofield told the congregation that the church could not continue because of its failing finances, and could not support a full-time priest.
Mr Risard did not know the announcement was coming, and was in “emotional shock”. He gave an impassioned defence of the congregation and its mission work, to which Bishop Schofield made no reply, Mr Backlund reported.