Catholic Church - The other Catholics: remaking Americas largest religion

The Other Catholics

Archbishop Richard Gundrey with new bishops (left to right) Patsy Grubbs, Kera Hamilton, and Diana Phipps, Richmond, Va., October 16, 2005. Courtesy of Daniel Dangaran.

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

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Copyright 2016 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

The author expresses appreciation to the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. The ideas presented have benefited from discussions in the University Seminar on Religion in America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Byrne, Julie, 1968 author.

Title: The other Catholics : remaking Americas largest religion / Julie Byrne.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044785 | ISBN 9780231166768 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231541701 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Independent Catholic churchesUnited States. | Catholic ChurchUnited StatesHistory21st century.

Classification: LCC BX4794.2.U6 B97 2016 | DDC 284/.8dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044785

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.

Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher

Cover image: Courtesy of Susan Collins

For Glenton

She will hold the position of preeminence. I will hold the position of Patriarch, which will have second place to her.

Herman Spruit, founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church of AntiochMalabar Rite, announcing the elevation of Meri Spruit to presiding matriarch in April 1990

Contents

Working on this book for many years, I benefited from the help of numerous people and institutions, and indeed could not have finished without them.

First and foremost I thank the independent Catholic women and men who welcomed a stranger into their midst and shared their lives with me. With these interactions unfolded the story and substance of the whole book. Above all I am grateful to Archbishop Richard Gundrey, who saw the possibilities of our meeting from the start and unfailingly supported my work. I am thankful to Bishops Alan Kemp and Mark Elliott Newman for continuing to support me and answer questions after Gundreys tenure. I witness all of the amazing independent Catholic interviewees, correspondents, and survey respondents from the African Orthodox Church, the American Catholic Church, Ascension Alliance, the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America, the Church of Antioch, the Community of the IncarnationKansas City, the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, the Imani Temple, the Liberal Catholic Church, the White-Robed Monks of St. Benedict, and several other jurisdictions. Often interviews spilled over into dinners, drinks, other hospitalities, and new friendships. I am honored and forever changed to have met their acquaintance.

Thank you to many colleagues and institutions whose material assistance and intellectual vibrancy contributed to this book. At Hofstra University, Dean Bernard Firestone, Provost Herman Berliner, and President Stuart Rabinowitz lent steady support, not least in the form of special leaves, student aides, course reductions, and summer grants. My Department of Religion colleagues Balbinder Bhogal, Ann Burlein, Warren Frisina, Sophie Hawkins, Hussein Rashid, Santiago Slabodsky, and John Teehan are readers, collaborators, and friends. During early years of research I taught at Texas Christian University and Duke University. There, too, I found invaluable support from administrators and colleagues. I feel tremendous gratitude to have taught and learned from graduate and undergraduate students at TCU, Duke, and Hofstra. Special thanks go to Francesca Antonacci and Daria Perrone, students at Hofstra who transcribed all interviews, turning them from digital sound files into searchable Word documents. At all three institutions, I am grateful for the support of department administrators, especially Joanne Herlihy at Hofstra. At all three institutions, I thank the special collections librarians and interlibrary loan specialists who tracked down obscure items wherever they might be. In the same measure I am grateful for the help of staff at the following libraries and archives: the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Notre Dame, the Library of Congress, the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart (Josephites), the Episcopal Diocese of Fond-du-Lac, the Science of Mind Archives, and the Imani Temple. The Aaron Warner Publication Fund of the University Seminars at Columbia University underwrote the cost of professional indexing.

I also thank those who generously invited me to workshop parts of this book in seminars, presentations, and essays and thereby helped make it better: the American religion colloquia at Princeton University and Columbia University; the Duke Center for Late Ancient Studies conference Late Antiquity Made New; the North American Religions Section and the Roman Catholic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion; the journal American Catholic Studies; the Center for American Religion at Indiana UniversityPurdue University at Indianapolis; and the Smithsonian Institute.

Far-flung scholars of religion are fellow travelers in thought and life who have consulted on this book over time. They include Catherine Albanese, Emma Anderson, Scott Appleby, Yaakov Ariel, Craig Atwood, Randall Balmer, Courtney Bender, Kalman Bland, Kate Bowler, Matthew Butler, Joel Carpenter, Bill Cavanaugh, Tshepo Masango Chry, Elizabeth Clark, Stephanie Cobb, Elesha Coffman, Andrew Cole, Timothy Daniels, William DAntonio, George Demacopoulos, Michele Dillon, Markus Dressler, Robert Ellwood, Kumiko Endo, Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Paul Froese, Terry Godlove, Henry Goldschmidt, Rich Houseal, Andrew Jacobs, PJ Johnston, David Kaufman, Kathleen Kautzer, Amy Koehlinger, Nadia Lahutsky, Rick Lischer, Katie Lofton, James McCartin, Sean McCloud, Gordon Melton, Bruce Mullin, Lynn Neal, Ann Neumann, Mark Noll, Abraham Nussbaum, Michael Pasquier, Jill Peterfeso, David Powell, Leonard Primiano, Elizabeth Pritchard, Jacob Remes, Sue Ridgely, Jalane Schmidt, Chad Seales, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Kyle Smith, Josef Sorett, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Rodney Stark, David Steinmetz, Ann Taves, Magda Teter, Terrence Tilley, Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, Jan Visser, Grant Wacker, David Watt, Isaac Weiner, Judith Weisenfeld, Jeff Wilson, Lauren Winner, Phyllis Zagano, David Zercher, and the entirety of the fun and brilliant American Catholic Studies Reading Group, convened by Marian Ronan and meeting across three states. I appreciate the particularly careful and critical feedback provided by Jessica Delgado, Charles Parker, John Plummer, Stephen Prothero, Thomas Rzeznik, Nathan Schneider, John Seitz, Maureen Tilley, Thomas Tweed, David Yamane, and two rounds of anonymous Columbia University Press readers. All went above and beyond to help me improve the book.

Others who gave assistance at critical junctures include James Abbott, Alan Bailin, Theresa Billiel, Weston Blelock, Randy Calvo, Tobe Carey, Sandy Dijkstra, John Douglass, Roger Fawcett, Ed Fields, James Ishmael Ford, Christine Hall, Thomas Hickey, James Konicki, Carol Lauderdale, Peter Levenda, Paul McMahon, Jean McManus, Anthony Mikovsky, Nina Paul, Matthew Payne, Mark Peddigrew, Michael Ruk, James Saad, Lisa Spar, Rhazes Spell, Gregory Tillett, and David Woolwine. I am a huge fan of the scholars within independent Catholicism, several of whom assisted me in countless ways, including Tim Cravens, Rob Angus Jones, Lewis Keizer, John Mabry, John Plummer (again), Gregory Singleton, Peter-Ben Smit, Jack Sweeley, Alexis Tancibok, and Serge Theriault.