Texas priest leads out in fight against gay bishop

PLANO, Texas — The Rev. Canon David Roseberry has built the congregation he started with 13 members back in 1985 into the Episcopal church that boasts the largest attendance in the nation.

His success with the flourishing Christ Church Episcopal — which draws 2,200 worshippers each weekend to this Dallas suburb — has helped make him a national leader in the conservative revolt against his denomination's consecration of an openly gay bishop.

"I feel like a very unlikely leader for all of this," said the 48-year-old rector.

Yet his church will welcome a constituting convention of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes next week — a meeting that will put the Rev. Canon Roseberry, once again, in the thick of the debate over homosexuality within his denomination.

The convention's aim will be to produce some sort of church-within-a-church arrangement, so that Episcopal conservatives — estimated by opponents as 15 percent of the denomination's 2.3 million members — can work together directly. The network's relationship to the Episcopal Church's national structure is still emerging.

Bishops, clergy and lay delegates from as many as a dozen conservative dioceses plan to develop an organizational charter and a theological platform during the two-day session, which starts Monday.

The Rev. Canon Roseberry's high-profile role doesn't surprise the Rev. Alden Hathaway, a former Pittsburgh bishop who became the priest's mentor after a chance meeting in Tucson, Ariz., two decades ago.

"He's a natural leader," said the Rev. Hathaway, now retired and living in Tallahassee, Fla. "I think one reason why is the way he sees himself. He doesn't have any aspirations or any ego or any need to put himself forward at all."

When the Rev. Hathaway first met the Rev. Canon Roseberry in the early 1980s, the recent seminary graduate was divorced and out of sorts, unsure what he believed. After two years of ministry in his native Arizona, the Rev. Canon Roseberry said, he was "out of gas and had no strength.

"I was preaching a kind of open-ended, God-loves-you, easy gospel, and I realized that people weren't changing."

The Rev. Hathaway challenged him to "take a giant leap of faith and trust the scriptures."