A Pilgrim's Way - Hardcover

Righter, Walter C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067945442X ISBN 13: 9780679454427

Publisher: Knopf, 1998

Synopsis

In the fall of 1990, Walter C. Righter, acting as an assisting bishop in New Jersey's Episcopal Diocese of Newark, ordained a highly qualified gay man who lived with his partner in a committed relationship. It was not the first such ordination and not even the first highly publicized one, but in 1995, a small group of fellow bishops brought charges against Righter for what he had done.

In A Pilgrim's Way, Bishop Righter tells his own story and the story of the ordination. He uncovers the machinations that set the conditions for such a trial long before the "victim" was selected. He recounts the accusation in 1995 of teaching false doctrine, the long wait for the process to unfold, the harassment, the hearings, the outpouring of support, the media attention, and the church court's eventual finding that no "core doctrine" had been violated. We see Bishop Righter's own rage and fear overcome as he begins to understand what fuels the rage and fear of his accusers. By the time his sixteen-month ordeal has ended he is proud to have been a catalyst for major decisions about gay and lesbian rights in the church.

Righter very forthrightly shares the insights he gained about the connection between misogyny and homophobia. He explains the inner, and often inglorious, workings of the House of Bishops. With great candor he reveals the undercurrents in his own life that may well have caused his opponents to think him vulnerable. It becomes quite clear, however, that those opponents badly misjudged both the man and the church. As Righter shows, the work begun in his defense and in his exoneration continued afterward and goes on still.

The "heretic" outed the church and became a hero. In A Pilgrim's Way we see how it happened.

About this title

About the Author

Walter Cameron Righter was born in Philadelphia in 1923. Following military service in World War II, he received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and his M.Div. from the Berkeley Divinity School, and served churches in Aliquippa and Georgetown, Pennsylvania, and Nashua, New Hampshire. He was consecrated Bishop of Iowa in 1972 and held that post through 1988. Following retirement he served as interim rector at churches in Rockford, Illinois, and Ridgewood, New Jersey, and as an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Newark from 1989 to 1991. He now lives in Alstead, New Hampshire.

From the Back Cover

Praise for A Pilgrim's Way

"A moving personal story that throws a powerful light on the dynamics that are present in the life of every Christian church today as it struggles to redefine itself and thus to live in a postmodern world. Walter Righter was placed by forces of
a fearful past into the center of a tense ecclesiastical dispute. He displayed in that crisis such dignity, grace, and integrity
that he transformed the evil of religious prejudice. He reveals in a gripping way what happens when good and evil vie for the soul of the Church."

--John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark, author of Why Christianity Must Change or Die

From the Inside Flap

of 1990, Walter C. Righter, acting as an assisting bishop in New Jersey's Episcopal Diocese of Newark, ordained a highly qualified gay man who lived with his partner in a committed relationship. It was not the first such ordination and not even the first highly publicized one, but in 1995, a small group of fellow bishops brought charges against Righter for what he had done.

In A Pilgrim's Way, Bishop Righter tells his own story and the story of the ordination. He uncovers the machinations that set the conditions for such a trial long before the "victim" was selected. He recounts the accusation in 1995 of teaching false doctrine, the long wait for the process to unfold, the harassment, the hearings, the outpouring of support, the media attention, and the church court's eventual finding that no "core doctrine" had been violated. We see Bishop Righter's own rage and fear overcome as he begins to understand what fuels the rage and fear of his accusers. By the

Reviews

In January 1995, a small group of Episcopalian bishops brought charges against Walter C. Righter, an assistant bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J. Bishop Righter had ordained into the priesthood a qualified gay man who was in a long-term monogamous relationship with another gay man. This was not the first time such an ordination had taken place, but Righter's opponents chose this ordination to draw a line in the sand. Here Righter tells his side of the story in prose that is both personal and captivating. "Here were people who had been faithful to the church's purpose all of their lives. Here were people who looked to the church to provide moral leadership, to open the doors to health, wholeness, and healing. And yet the church was resisting." The Righter case drew national attention not only to Righter himself but also, more importantly, to the practices and beliefs of the Episcopal church. Righter narrates the attempt to bring this incident to trial, and he discusses the implications of this event for the future of the Episcopal church in the United States. Finally, the Righter case called into question the means by which the Episcopal church determines orthodoxy. Righter's book offers a riveting account of the church's attempt to hold a modern-day heresy trial.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Righter, retired Episcopal bishop of Iowa, tells the story of the nationally publicized heresy trial brought upon him for ordaining a gay man. Bishop Righter details a case of the cruel politics loosed in the Episcopal Church by clerical resisters to social change. The book opens with the words of the ecclesiastical court that exonerated the bishop from any wrongdoing in ordaining Barry Stopfel, an openly gay man in a committed relationship, to the diaconate, the first rung of clerical orders. It then backtracks to the bishop's childhood and active career in the Church, moving from a midwestern setting where ``an interracial marriage was defined as a union between a Norwegian and a Swede,'' to the more highly charged ethnic mix of the Episcopal Church's diocese of Newark, NJ--a progression he labels ``the process of becoming a liberal.'' But the book's most intellectually stimulating pages address the Kafkaesque anomaly of heresy as such emerging to occupy a mainline Protestant denomination in the late, post-heretical years of the 20th century. The bishop astutely connects homophobia to misogyny, and helpfully distinguishes doctrine from recommendation in Church polity, and consensus from compromise. But he never quite explains how, after the Episcopal Church, in 1994, canonically forbade discrimination against candidates for the priesthood on the basis of sexual orientation, ten conservative bishops could have colluded, in 1995, to bring about the heresy trial in the first place. Some minor errors and inelegances mar the writing: For instance, the bishop unduly credits the world, in 1939, with significant moral outrage over Hitler's treatment of Jews and gays; and he clumsily describes a sympathetic new acquaintance as ``genuine-seeming''. An informative if loosely structured and digressive memoir by a cleric who helped move his Church toward greater inclusiveness. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067945442X
• ISBN 13: 9780679454427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168