Oversight, but no see

The issue was raised earlier by the merger of some groups of dissident Anglicans in the USA with the American Episcopal Church, led by Archbishop Anthony Clavier (who in his Anglican days was a student both at St Stephen's House, Oxford, and Nashotah House, Wisconsin), and by the split from the Roman Communion of Fr (now Bishop) George Stallings of Washington DC.

And now we have the phenomenon of two irregular bishops within the Anglican Communion who might well also be considered EVs in the historic sense.

EVs have been around for a very long time, and were a cause of concern in the early Church. But it is the religious subculture of Western-based EVs that has existed for more than a century which causes us concern and is relevant to our situation.

"EVs in the historic sense": Bishops Charles Murphy and
John Rogers, consecrated in Singapore. Photo ENS

Most Christians, indeed most people, remain unaware of them; and for most of the time those who are aware forget about them until some issue or crisis reminds us that they are still here - in most ways essentially unchanged.

The term episcopi vagantes, "wandering bishops", while it is still used as a technical term for bishops who stand within a historic succession but outside any of the mainstream communions, is not entirely correct. Most of these bishops do not, in fact, wander very far.

In England, for example, places such as Bournemouth, Islington and Crystal Palace, which were centres of their activity in the 1950s, remain so to this day. The term "bishops irregular", which is the title of a directory compiled by one of their own number, is, perhaps, more accurate.

Those preparing for the Lambeth Conference of 1948 were so concerned about the problems arising from irregular episcopacy that they asked the late Henry Brandreth to undertake some research; and his book, Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church, remained for many years the standard text. Today it is out of print and hopelessly dated, yet, as every second-hand theological bookseller knows, is in manic demand - usually from other EVs.

During the same period, some historical background was provided by Canon A. J. Macdonald's small monograph Episcopi Vagantes in Church History. Since Brandreth, there have been a few attempts to maintain some monitoring of the phenomenon. The late F. H. Amphlett Micklewright, at that time an Anglican priest, wrote a series of articles in The Pilot, the journal of the Society for Promoting Catholic Unity, in the 1950s; and then, in 1964, came Bishops at Large, a bulky work by Peter Anson, a popular historian of ecclesiastical backwaters. Since those days, interest has declined.

If Brandreth was seen by these small Churches as a consistently hostile investigator - though he maintained a continuous correspondence and liaison with hundreds of them for many years - Anson seemed to delight in the bizarre, and his book portrayed the entire subculture as ridiculous, a world marked by sexual pathology, a fascination for the theatrical, and a high degree of lunacy. And clearly there are such elements in the world of EVs, as there are in religious subcultures of all kinds.

Today the books are out of print. Most of the reliable students of the phenomenon - not only Brandreth and Anson, but Frederic Adams of Wimbledon, Frederick Brittain of Jesus College, Cambridge, and others - are now dead.

It tends to be left to the Sunday papers to discover and sensationalise a "bogus bishop", usually in connection with some sex scandal (such as the notorious affair of Roger Gleaves), or some other news story (the strange case of Fr Thomas Dowling, Oliver North's witness to the UN Congress in the Iran-Contra affair, who turned out to be a priest of the "Celtic Catholic Church").

But neither the witch-hunting of the earlier era nor the spasmodic interest of the secular press are really very helpful; and perhaps the time has come for a less hostile and more careful and critical examination of the place of irregular episcopal successions in the changing Christian world.

THERE ARE a number of reasons why EVs are likely to become more significant in the next few years. As individuals and groups are forced out of mainstream communions, or leave over some issue, EVs may well be waiting in the wings, ready to provide apostolic orders, if these are sought.

"Traditional" faith, the ordination of women, and new liturgies are not the only issues that could lead some towards irregular episcopacy, though they were probably crucial in the Falk-Clavier merger in the USA, and in the appeal of that faction to some disenchanted Episcopalians.

But in Washington DC, Fr George Stallings left the Roman Communion as a protest against its racism, and within a short time received episcopal consecration from Archbishop Richard Bridges of the Independent Old Catholic Church. (Within a year they had severed relations - a recurring pattern among EVs.)

One of the oldest groups of the EVs in the USA consists of black Christians in Churches such as the African Orthodox Church; while in Britain at least one bishop of the black-led Churches, mainly Pentecostal, has his episcopal orders from an "Old Catholic" succession, that of the late Archbishop Charles Brearley of Cusworth, near Doncaster.

Since Brandreth, students of the phenomenon have tended to divide EVs according to the three main successions: those deriving from the East, through Julius Ferrete and through Rene Vilatte, and the Old Catholic line through Arnold Harris Mathew.

But perhaps a more helpful line of division is according to the theology and socio-political praxis of the groups. Following such a division, there appear to be three main types.

First, there are those EVs who, while conforming to Catholic orthodoxy, are mainly concerned with valid orders and with the acquisition of various successions. These groups have few lay people, and members tend to become bishops fairly quickly - and then, almost as quickly, excommunicate one another.

Bishop Rene Vilatte

One might see this tradition as the reductio ad absurdum of the Augustinian theory of validity, described by Hugh Montefiore as "grace by pipeline" (Church Times, 6 May 1994) - combined with a more or less psychopathic interest in ceremonial and ecclesiastical paraphernalia.

Some will say this is what happens when a particular element in Anglo-Catholicism becomes detached from reality. Indeed, it is not unknown for Anglican priests to be consecrated by an EV while continuing to exercise their ministry in the C of E.

A fascinating example was the late Fr J. E. Bazile-Corbin, for many years Rector of St Mary's, Runwell, in Essex. Bazile-Corbin regarded the Anglican ministry as a job, comparable to that of a civil servant, which he exercised efficiently and according to law. But he saw his authentic priesthood as lying in his irregular status as a bishop in the "Catholicate of the West". He wrote his letters in purple ink, and signed them with an episcopal cross.

Second, there are groups that exercise genuine pastoral ministries, often among poor and marginalised groups. Bishop Francis Glenn's ministry in Battersea in the 1950s was of this kind. Some of the EVs, such as the late Archbishop Geoffrey Paget King in Islington, pioneered work in such fields as liturgical study, animal rights, and work for peace and justice. In Chicago, the African Orthodox cathedral ministers in a very poor black area where, certainly a few years ago, its membership was more representative of the neighbourhood than the Anglican parish a few hundred yards away.

Third, there are groups, ultimately deriving from the Liberal Catholic movement of Willoughby and Leadbeater, who are involved with the occult, theosophy, the magical fringes of Freemasonry, and various gnostic traditions. For many years, the entry on Freemasonry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica was written by an EV, J. S. M. Ward. There was a gnostic Church, the Pre-Nicene Catholic Church, led by Archbishop Richard Palatine, in Kensington some years ago, which attempted to revive the Illuminati and Rosicrucian traditions.

Such groups tend to make connections with the occult wings of the counter-culture, as in the late 1960s; and the New Age resurgence will be a godsend to them. The world of EVs is complex and confusing. One of the problems is that people who get interested in the phenomenon have a tendency to get obsessed with it. The late Dr C. B. Moss - the most regular correspondent to the Church Times in the 1950s - once said that such people should be gathered up and put on a desert island, where they could hold ceremonies, excommunicate one another, and argue about valid orders until the eschaton.

But the issues raised by EVs will not go away; and we need a more thoughtful, less hostile, and more discriminating approach to a subculture that, however odd and marginal, deserves to be treated with respect, compassion, and intelligence.

The Revd Dr Kenneth Leech is community theologian at St Botolph's, Aldgate, in east London.