I Am Priest #4: Another Story from the Saga of the Diocese of Florida

 

I was walking with a colleague from the diocese of Georgia along the street in Jacksonville on our way to an Evening Prayer service. We were attending the Episcopal Parish Network conference being held in Florida's largest city.  I happened to look at the entry way of an otherwise non-descript building. And there was a sphinx staring into the street and looming over the sidewalk. Instantly, I remembered what I thought of this place.

This is Egypt.

Not literally, obviously.

But it is how I have felt about diocese of Florida, a place where I was forced to leave in order to follow my call to the sacred order of priests.

It is one of those wounds that I have carried with me into my priesthood, a memory of what it is to sit before the powerful and to be told that due to an immutable characteristic of my lesbian orientation and the fact that I have a loving partner in my life, I was disqualified from becoming a priest.  

That conversation with Bishop John Howard took place in his office on October 7, 2013. My rector, the Rev. Dave Killeen, was present for the conversation, which ended up not being so much a conversation as a quiz game where the single category was the Episcopal catechism. 

I was asked questions about God and about sin. My favorite was when I was asked, bluntly and aggressively, “Who is Jesus Christ?”

My answer then…and now…” Jesus Christ is the greatest liberator from oppression ever.”

Fr. Dave would later explain to me that while that was a “good” answer, a better answer would have been: “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”

After forty-five minutes of testing me on the tenets of the faith, Bishop Howard gave me the news that I should have expected. There was no way he would entertain having me enter the process of discernment and ordination in the diocese of Florida. His specific statement:

“While you might have a call, we have a rule in our diocese that we do not ordain people who are partnered and gay.”

I sat motionless, quiet. There was nothing more to do or say.

The bishop did offer me an alternative. 

He invited me to go back to Tallahassee and study the catechism with my rector, and then return to Jacksonville in six months. Then he might recommend me to another bishop.

My rector and I left.

We said nothing to each other the whole two and half hours back to Tallahassee.

By the First Sunday in Advent, I transferred my letter to St. Thomas, Thomasville.

I left the Egypt of the diocese of Florida…and entered the promised land of the diocese of Georgia.

+++

Fast forward to May 2022. Bishop Howard is due to retire soon and so the diocese of Florida engaged in the process of electing a new bishop. There were five candidates: three white men, one Latin man, and one white woman. While other dioceses seeking new episcopal leadership garnered interest from across the country, the slate for Florida consisted mostly of people homegrown, or with experience in adjacent dioceses (Central Florida).

The night before the election was to take place, a message went out to the diocesan email list that there was a problem in getting enough clergy to be present to hold the election. Apparently, some had decided that an electing convention was the perfect time to go on vacation. Others were sidelined by COVID. They scrambled to come up with a way for votes to be cast online, which apparently was a spectacular failure, not to mention that such accommodation was not made for the lay order. When one of the candidates tried to drop out after a round of voting, he couldn’t do so, causing more fracturing of the vote. So, even though the convention elected the Rev. Charlie Holt, it was clear that it had been irregular. After a complaint was filed, and found valid, the diocese was ordered to have a do over.

Two of the candidates dropped out. The three that remained included the Rev. Charlie Holt. He insisted that he felt called to be the bishop of Florida. The diocese, in the meantime, had felt he needed a place in the diocesan office and created a position for him as a "diocesan priest." 

The diocese held another election in November. All canonically resident clergy were ordered to be there. That meant priests who no longer served at a church in the diocese had to come back to cast a vote. The Rev. Holt won election again…by one vote… in the clergy order.

Done?

No.

And this is where my story becomes part of the saga of the diocese of Florida.

Bishop Howard has been tilting the scale in favor of more conservative clergy for quite a while. One way to do that: deny queer people the opportunity to seek ordination. If we aren’t here, we can’t upset the status quo of keeping the diocese a bastion of cisgender straight and very theologically narrow clerics.

My name surfaced as one of the people denied access to the ordination process. The Rev. Elyse Gustafson, the only out lesbian priest in the diocese of Florida, got in touch with me and asked if I would be willing to be a “Me Too” essentially for the complaint she and others were filing about the election.

“I’m identifying you as Priest #4.”

+++

On January 20, 2023, I had a Zoom call with the Rev. Carrie Schofield-Broadbent. She was serving as an interviewer on behalf of the Court of Review for the Episcopal Church, the group that was looking into the shenanigans that have happened with Florida’s episcopal election. Once more, I was asked to tell my story of what went down when I met with the Bishop of Florida in October 2013.

I told the story.

Again.

It is the same story I have told what seems like a hundred thousand times, to individuals, committees, commissions, seminarians, etc.

But this time, I started to cry.

I cried tears of frustration.

I cried tears of deep hurt.

The wounds are still there.

In telling my story, I was reminded how painful it was to finally give up the struggle and stop resisting this sense that God was leading me into a life of service and great vulnerability. And then to have a bishop with a prejudiced view of who I am as a child of God tell me that because of this one aspect of my humanity, he not only doubted God’s call, but he also wouldn’t ordain me anyway was a slap across the face. As I’ve said to many a person, “Church hurt is real.”

My story became part of the record to demonstrate a pattern of discrimination that has been in place to deny the voices of LGBTQ+ people in the diocese.

But the complaint went even further than that.

There are priests currently serving at parishes in the diocese of Florida who were not allowed to vote because Bishop Howard has not given them canonical residency. The diocese claims that these priests never sought to be resident clergy. But what is more accurate is that these priests could not apply because they had been told it wasn’t possible to give them residency, or encouraged not to become resident for whatever reason. Many of the priests in that position are sympathetic to more progressive theology and accepting of LGBTQ+ people.

In other words, the process has been flawed from the start and geared toward promoting only those who have viewpoint in line with Bishop Howard.

A photo of the altar party from the St. John's All Saints' Sunday service, 2013. I was a verger at the service. Bishop Howard asked me if I had been meeting with Fr. Dave about the catechism. I told him I had. I didn't tell him I had discerned to leave St. John's. 

+++

February, 2023. The Court of Review issued its findings on the five objections raised about the vote in November. The report with documentation was 189 pages long.

Three of the five claims they found to have no merit.

But they did find that there were serious procedural problems especially since there had been such systemic discrimination against LGBTQ+ clergy, people, and anyone sympathetic to us.

It took no time for the Standing Committee of the diocese of Florida to fire back. They sent out an email, falsely stating to the diocese that the Court really hadn’t found a lot wrong with the vote, and that the things the Court did highlight were dismissed as “anonymous complaints.” They attacked the Court for having sought out the information, and accused them of trying to run a “Title IV objection through a Title III process.” (That’s Episcopal Legal speak for using the election process as a place to try a clergy person for abusive conduct).

The response of the Standing Committee was so nasty and virulent.

“Typical!” I thought.

Then I got a message.

The Living Church magazine wanted to talk to me about the testimony I had given to the Court. Then Episcopal News Service called.

Terrified, I called my bishop. He assured me there would be no repercussions should I decide to speak to the media. Strange that a former reporter should be afraid to talk to the press, but I have seen work place reprisals in my professional career.  Still remembering what it was like to sit in that room at 325 Market Street in Jacksonville, I consented to be interviewed.

The Living Church article came out on Shrove Tuesday. The ENS article about ten days later.

And my story and my recollection of what happened on October 7, 2013, was called into question and dismissed.

This time by the Canon to the Ordinary, the Rev. Allison DeFoor.

Before he became a Canon, Allison was many things. A sheriff of Monroe County, Florida. A Republican politician. A liberation theologian who worked on faith-based prison programs. He would serve at the Friday 12:10 Eucharist at St. John’s with me as his Eucharistic Minister and acolyte. He used to wear Hawaiian shirts that he had tailored made to fit his clerical collar.

That changed when he went to Jacksonville. There, he only wore black clergy shirts.

Canon DeFoor noted in the articles that in 2013, same-sex marriage was still illegal in Florida, so of course Bishop Howard was only following the law of the secular authority as mentioned in the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. Later, to Episcopal News Service, Canon DeFoor would say that Bishop Howard had no memory of meeting with me.

+++

March 3, 2023: I was at the registration table for the Episcopal Parish Network Conference. A man approached me. He was an average looking middle-aged white man.

“Are you Susan Gage?”

“Yes?” I’m thinking, ‘I have a lanyard with a name tag; it isn’t a secret who I am.’

“I’m Charlie Holt.” 

This was followed by comments about seeing a lot of posts about me on Facebook. I nod and agree that I’m sure he had seen some things. A strange and long-lasting silence ensued as we stared at each other almost as if to see who was going to blink first.  I finally decided to end this stand off.

“Well, thank you for introducing yourself,”

The Rev. Holt said something about being happy to meet me. He would continue to run into me in the hallway throughout the rest of the conference, always being sure to say, “Hi Susan!” as he passed.

The next day at the conference, as I was eating lunch with colleagues from the diocese of Georgia, I heard a voice behind me.

“Susan!!”

I turned around. It was Canon Allison DeFoor. He was all smiles. 

"Hello Allison."

He talked about how he wished he had been at my ordination. Hoped things were going well for me at my church in Valdosta. His tone and his body language made it seem as if this were a homecoming and we were two long lost buddies. I couldn’t keep up the charade.

“Y’know, Allison. I need to tell you that you've hurt me.”

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“Well, the things you’ve been saying in the church press about me, and my meeting with the bishop…”

The smile was gone.  The interrogator came out.

“Tell me what in anything I’ve said that wasn’t factual!”

“It’s not the facts, Allison. It’s true that marriage wasn’t legal in Florida in 2013. But that’s not the point.”

He began to argue with me and stating that he wasn’t working for the bishop at the time of my meeting that I had had with Howard.

“I know you weren’t. But that meeting did take place. And to see that denied, hurt me. And from you? You who said you supported my ordination. You used to quote William Stringfellow to me. That hurt me.”

We went from jovial greeting... to interrogation. And now he was dressing me down for doubting his support of my ordination, for questioning his commitment to LGBTQ+ rights, and other words that I couldn’t quite make out in the midst of his fury. He informed me that this was the last conversation we would ever have. I couldn’t have been happier to see him leave.

Then he came back.

“And Susan: one of the things about ‘the call’ is to show fairness!”

“I am fair, Allison!”

My Georgia colleagues who were witnessing but not hearing the exchange were baffled. One of them later wanted to know, “Who was that little man?”

Little is accurate.

+++

The diocese of Florida has sent the Rev. Charlie Holt’s name out to the whole church seeking consent to make him the Bishop Coadjutor until Bishop John Howard finally retires in September. I have no idea what the outcome of those votes is going to be.

My diocese has voted No. And the Diocese of Ohio put out a statement on its “No” vote.

I think what would be best for the diocese is to have a break from what has been and is now in the hopes that what will be might finally bring them into step with the rest of the Episcopal Church.

An interim or provisional bishop for a period of three to five years might not be a bad idea. The Episcopal Diocese of Florida is divided and abusive. It needs a real shake up and time to heal.

That is my prayer for them.