Bishop is ordained before hundreds

Anglican clergymen from as far away as Uganda and Newfoundland visited Newport Beach on Saturday to ordain a new bishop in the fledgling Anglican Church of North America.

Formed in 2008, the church is made up of congregations in the United States and Canada that have broken away from the Episcopal Church over differing views on homosexuality and the Scriptures.

The movement includes Newport’s St. James Church on Via Lido.

“This is an important, historical day for the whole church,” said Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church of North America, who presided over the incense-drenched ceremony at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Saturday. “You can see the excitement in the people today.”

William Thompson was ordained as the first bishop of the of the Diocese of Western Anglicans of the Anglican Church in North America during a three-hour ceremony filled with pageantry and song.

The newly formed Diocese of Western Anglicans Thompson will preside over includes 22 churches scattered across California, Arizona, Idaho, Washington and Montana.

The few hundred people assembled at the ordination broke into applause as the archbishop placed a red embroidered bishop’s hat atop Thompson’s head.

“Receive the helmet of protection and salvation,” Duncan said after placing the pointed hat on Thompson’s head. “Be merciful and not remiss, so minister discipline, yet do not forget mercy, that when the chief shepherd shall appear, you man receive the never fading crown of glory.”

At one point during the ceremony, Thompson began to cry, while kneeling at the front of the church.

“I was mostly trying to hold my tears back,” Thompson said after the ordination. “There was a sense of unbelief that God had chosen me for this.”

Thompson, rector at All Saint’s Church in Long Beach, never had aspirations to be a become a bishop, he said.

But he has become one of the leaders in a growing movement of conservative congregations who have broken away from the Episcopal Church in the past five years over differing views on homosexuality and their interpretation of Holy Scripture.

The fledgling bishop hopes to see his diocese grow, building new churches across the Western United States, he said. There are also the ongoing legal battles with the Episcopal Church to attend to.

Several churches in the diocese are still embroiled in heated property disputes with the Episcopal Church, including St. James.

St. James became one of three conservative Southern California parishes that placed themselves under the jurisdiction of an Anglican Ugandan bishop after the Episcopal Church consecrated a gay bishop in 2003. Other Episcopal bishops began sanctioning gay marriages about the same time. The break led to a highly publicized property dispute over whether the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles or the St. James’ congregation owned the white stucco church, which stands across the street from Newport Harbor on the Balboa Peninsula.