Word: memberships
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Case in point. Father Bowen Woodruff, Vicar of the Anglican Church of the Incarnation (ACOI), applied for UM membership in February 2002. His church, a parish of the nation-wide Anglican Province of Christ the King, includes a substantial number of Harvard students and faculty and meets in the Swedenborg Chapel, right in the middle of campus. In April of that year, Woodruff received a letter back from Dennis Sheehan, the chair of the UM’s membership committee, detailing concerns the UM had about the ACOI’s relationship with mainline Episcopalians...
...evidently, neither Monseigneur Sheehan nor anyone on the UM’s membership committee consulted The Encyclopedia of American Religions, one of the official reference books listed in the UM’s bylaws. This book—and indeed even a cursory Google search—would have explained that Province churches were actually not Anglican but Episcopalian. The sect split from mainstream Episcopalians in the late-1970s (with the Province churches retaining a more orthodox doctrine). With different dioceses, liturgies and increasingly different theologies, Province churches cater to a completely different crowd of worshippers...
...Woodruff had to write a letter the University President Lawrence H. Summers before the UM felt obliged to contact him again. This happened in May 2003, more than five months later, and, coincidentally, after that year’s UM application deadline. In this letter, sent by current UM Membership chair Pat McLeod, McLeod cited “concerns about the legitimacy of [the ACOI’s] receiving body at Harvard and how [it] both identifies and distinguishes [itself] from the Episcopal and Anglican Church” as reasons why the ACOI was not admitted...
...mentioned any apprehension about the receiving body and thus McLeod’s concerns about the receiving body came as an unexpected new concern—the UM’s lack of meaningful communication with Father Woodruff has undermined the ACOI’s chances to gain UM membership for two years. And the UM’s shifting reasons for denying the ACOI membership have confused and disillusioned Father Woodruff. For an organization founded to promote a diversity of religions on campus, the UM has not shown even a modicum of eagerness to incorporate new members. Quite...
Reached for comment, McLeod expressed hope that the ACOI would soon gain UM membership. However, in the same e-mail, he wrote, “I doubt that the Anglican issue will keep Rev. Woodruff from being admitted to the UM”—referring to the denominational issue that has plagued the ACOI. Considering that Msgr. Sheehan cited that concern and only that concern in the UM’s very first letter to the ACOI back in April 2002, it is maddening that this small issue—which has finally been deemed irrelevent and rightly...