April 10, 1999
A Prairie Preacher's Quest for Vengence - National Post Article
Ted Wigglesworth seeks justice from a United Church that separated him from his flock
BY GEORGE KOCH
BASHAW, ALTA.
The first sign of trouble came to Rev. Ted Wigglesworth on the July 1 holiday three years ago. That day, a member of his congregation in Bashaw and Mirror, modest agricultural towns in the rolling, aspen-dotted prairie of central Alberta, told him some members were complaining about his ministry At the time, the veteran minister shrugged off the warning., Anyone in a high-profile position in a small community would face minor strife eventually. Goodwill among colleagues and members, Mr. Wigglesworth believed, would see him through. He’d lived in the region 22 years, serving as a school principal and counsellor before becoming a minister, and building a house with his own hands on land his wife’s parents had farmed.
Since that day, says Mr. Wigglesworth, his life has turned upside-down. Two weeks ago Friday, Mr. Wigglesworth filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the United Church of Canada at the local, regional, and national levels, plus eight church members, including the Rev. William Phipps, the UCC’s top cleric.
Mr. Wigglesworth says he’s been put through a Kafkaesque wringer of secret meetings, defamatory statements, forced psychiatric assessments, denunciations, dismissal, and appeals.
The bottom line: Ted Wigglesworth is no longer minister of the Bashaw-Mirror Regional Charge, and he’s been barred from taking on a new ministry. He and his wife Orlene support themselves on her salary and modest rents from their small farm.
"This has been devastating intellectually, emotionally, and financially. It’s changed everything about what I thought would be my years going toward retirement,"said Mr Wigglesworth, 57.
"Sometimes at first, I thought I should just walk away from it. But now, I’m going to see it through."
Mr. Wigglesworth alleges a largely personal local dispute was exploited by theological liberals at successively higher levels of the UCC’s organization right up to the church’s national council, including Mr. Phipps. Mr. Phipps is best-known among non-churchgoers for a rambling, ambiguous newspaper inter-view 18 months ago in which the freshly appointed UCC moderator denied the full divinity of Christ.
The UCC liberals, Mr. Wigglesworth believes, seized an opportunity to rid themselves of a vocal conservative. He was a co-founder of the National Alliance of Covenanting Congregations, a UCC association dedicated to upholding traditional interpretations of Scripture."There’s been active support for [radical policies] from the top levels of the UCC,’ Mr. Wigglesworth says. "Any of us who’ve been on the side of orthodox theology have had problems."
Mr. Wigglesworth wants his job back, an apology~ and $3.5 million in damages. And he wants the UCC’s leadership to stop its three-decade-old campaign of theological liberalization that, Mr. Wigglesworth and other UCC conservatives allege, is at least partly responsible for their church’s decline.
UCC conservatives say the Wigglesworth case could be the first shot in a wider counterattack by members and ministers who feel their backs are to the wall, theologically speaking. They believe a turning point was reached last year, when a court in Bermuda awarded control of a church to a congregation that had broken away from the UCC over the same theological concerns. Mr. Wigglesworth’s lawyer told the National Post the lawsuit could be broadened to claim the churches in Bashaw and Mirror.
"Traditionalists don’t have access to church levers of power" said Victor Shepherd, a professor of historical theology at ’Tyndale Seminary in Toronto and a supporter of Mr. Wigglesworth’s. "But we do have access to secular court levers. If Mr. Wigglesworth wins, no legitimately dissenting minister will be molested again."
The essence of Mr. Wigglesworth’s story is not unusual, say others. "I’ve seen ministers lose their homes, sell their personal belongings, and even commit suicide," says Casey McKibbon, a UCC minister in Metcalfe, Ont, who runs the Clergy Support Network, which helps ministers caught up in disputes. "If the church decides you’re not for them, you’re in trouble. These guys end up bitter, broken, and broke."
See WIGGLESWORTH on Page B4PHOTO Of Ted accompanied article
Former preacher Ted Wigglesworth now earns a meager living as a farmer.
Support from his congregation didn’t spare Ted Wigglesworth an abrupt early retirementAn ousted minister fights for his church
WIGGLESWORTH
Continued from Page El Precise numbers are hard to come by, however. Mr. McKibbon notes 120 ministers resigned en masse after the UCC decided to begin ordaining practising homosexuals in the late 1980s. The problem with nailing down numbers on people leaving for a rea-
sons of dissent or persecution is that a lot of them simply take ear ly retirement,"he says.
But Mr. McKibbon says he’s worked with at least 2,000 dissident ministers from several mainline churches over the past 15 years, about 60% of them in the UCC. He currently deals with 100 to 150 UCC ministers per year who are "in difficulty." Mr. McKibbon says there are at least five -hush-hush" disputes similar to the Wigglesworth case now happening in his presbytery.
UCC officials deny the church leadership holds an animus against theological conservatives, or that the UCC’s policies are draining off ministers. According to the UCC’s national office in Toronto, the number of ordained ministers is rising, reaching 3,888 in 1998, up, from only 1,777 in 1978.
"There’s a considered effort in our seminaries to acknowledge different theological points of view and offer appropriate pastoral support for the diversity of theological conviction that there is in the church,’ said the Rev. Peter Wyatt, general secretary for theology, faith, and ecumenism on the UCC’s Toronto-based national council.
Edward Wigglesworth was born in Kelowna, B.C., trained at universities in Vancouver, Lethbridge and Hamilton, was ordained as a UCC minister in 1970, and ministered in the Crowsnest Pass region of Alberta before settling in Bashaw, where they belong to or have none at all he was a school principal before becoming UCC minister in1989. Mr. Wigglesworth considers himself theologically orthodox by UCC standards. He supports the UCC’s ordination of women, and believes in a socially activist church. He has set up food banks and counselled victims of sexual abuse
But Mr. Wigglesworth also believes in the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Unlike Mr.Phipps , he holds that the crucified Christ was physically resurrected. And he opposes the ordination of practising homosexuals, and objects to politically correct moves like inserting references to "The Goddess" in UCC hymns and baptisms.
Mr Wigglesworth says the local board, the presbytery, and finally the regional conference made escalating demands that he take remedial courses and see a psychiatrist. At no point, he says, was he told specifically what actions would satisfy his detractors.
At a church meeting in January, 1997, two thirds of the congregation’s members voted to keep Mr. Wigglesworth as minister. "I was satisfied with Ted as a minister, both in his sermons and in what he did for the congregation,’ said Marilyn Kerik, a lifelong UCC member from Bashaw, in an interview. "Ted confirmed my son. Kids like him."
But that same month, the Coronation Presbytery voted to terminate Mr. .Wigglesworth’s salary and benefits. That day, he recalls, "I knew I needed a lawyer" Sub sequent appeals to the UCC’s’ upper echelons, on grounds both that the reasons for his dismissal and the procedure followed were invalid, were denied. Mrs. Kerik is especially upset that the local board and pres-bytery "withheld all the details" through the entire process. That made some people fear the worst: theft or sexual abuse.
Mr. Wigglesworth’s lawsuit claims the liberalizing moves of the UCC’s leaders breached their duties to the church by violating the 1925 Basis of Union, the UCC’s constitution. He wants the court to disallow any UCC policies it finds violate the Basis of Union.
Theological conservatives believe the UCC’s steady decline is linked to liberalization. It’s difficult to quantify the decline in attendance. UCC officials acknowledge that only 400,000 of the UCC’s 2.3 million "adherents" attend a United Church regularly.
But attendance at mainline churches as a whole stands at barely 20% of Canadians, down from 67% in 1946. The propor tion of people telling pollsters they "don’t know" What religion they belong to or have none at all is exploding. Then again, attendance at small, very conservative churches is rising rapidly.
The UCC’s leadership will not comment on Mr.Wigglesworth’s - specific claims,. Mr. Wyatt said he regretted Mr. Wigglesworth’s decision to sue. "It’s very unlikely that theological conviction alone would be the cause of the removal of a minister from office," said Mr. Wyattt.
Mr. Gabert, a Bashaw-area farmer, made the original motion to dismiss Mr. Wigglesworth. The pastoral relationship was no longer viable, sustainable, and productive," he said. "1 was made aware that numerous parishioners had deep seated antagonism going back years with Wigglesworth. Despite a big effort by a lot of people, they remained unresolved."
So is the fate of the UCC. Mr. Wigglesworth’s lawsuit, said Prof: Shepherd, could be the beginning of an effort to wrest individual congregations from control by the national council. Prof. Shepherd believes UCC conservatives have gained a crucial precedent in a Bermuda case.
In 1993, members of the Grace Methodist Church in Pembroke, Bermuda, voted to severe ties to the UCC, which includes the Wesleyan Methodist Synod on Bermuda. The congregation then claimed title to their church last June, the Supreme Court of Bermuda ruled the UCC hierarchy had committed a breach of trust by departing fundamentally from Methodist theology. The court pointedly agreed with the expert opinion of Dr. Shepherd that the UCC’s liberalization violated the Basis of Union and was therefore invalid. A church trust, the court ruled, is to be enforced for the benefit of the original adherents, not those bent on changing church doctrine. In the event of a schism, she ruled property would be awarded to the adherents, in this case, the congregation. That case is now under appeal.
Mr. McKibbon, who preached his last sermon on Easter Sunday then retired, argues it’s liberals who have the most to lose from the UCC’s decline or disintegration, since most conservatives will eventually find a home or other churches. "The UCC is spiritually lost without the ’conservatives,’ says. Mr. Mc’Kibbon."Without them, there’ll be no UCC in the next’ millennium, and no socia1, justice movement either"
National Post April 10/99
Posted at April 10, 1999 01:23 PM