The Wandering Bishops: Apostles of a New Spirituality - Home Temple

WANDERING BISHOPS 42
Chapter Five: APOSTLES OF A NEW AGE:
The New Vagantes
Today there are many contemporary independent Bishops. Most of them are what I call
“Catholic and Orthodox Wannabees.” Their churches perpetuate Roman Catholic or Eastern
Orthodox liturgy and theology, but with their own schismatic ecclesiastical spin. For example,
many denominating themselves as “Anglican” or “Episcopal” have formed in opposition to the
recent ordination of women in the Protestant Apostolic churches. Others denominating
themselves as “Catholic” have been formed specifically to serve a theologically traditional gay
community that has been excluded by the Roman Catholic Church. Yet others calling
themselves “Catholic” or “Orthodox” pride themselves in their ultra-conservative liturgical and
theological links to the past, which they mistake for “original Christianity.” Even the Liberal
Catholic Church, which is basically Theosophical in its orientation, still refuses to ordain women!
These groups do not interest me. Their Bishops and founders will not be the subject of the
following chapters. They do not contribute to the emergence of new forms of spirituality for what
I call the New Humanity—an emergence to which I have dedicated my work as a Bishop. The
interested reader will find scores of them listed in encyclopedias of independent Bishops and
online at their many web sites, but not in this book.
I am devoting this chapter to the first wave of truly New Age Bishops who immigrated to the
United States during the mid-century and brought with them visions of new spirituality for
contemporary and future humanity. They are the new Wandering Bishops, the Episcopi
Vagantes of the twentieth century. They have been immediate predecessors, colleagues, and
associates. In this chapter I shall write brief sketches of their work. To me they stand in the
authentic tradition of the Apostles in their courage and openness to Divine Spirit.
Few would agree with me. To most church people, and to the “Catholic and Orthodox
Wannabees,” these Bishops are the worst kind of heretic--the sort that ordains women and
looks for divine inspiration in all sorts of esoteric and non-Christian religions. To the Catholic
these renegades have broken with every theological and ecclesiological practice which has
traditionally defined Catholicism. To the Protestant they have adopted supernatural and non-
Biblical theories about liturgy and prayer which seem no more than a revival of pagan
shamanism or medieval magic. To the evangelical fundamentalist especially they are anathema
because they are in every way liberal, modernist, and willing to follow the scientia cordis, the
"knowledge of the heart," in responding to divine guidance. They are anti-dogmatic, antievangelical,
and very much willing to let God draw His worshippers to Him/Herself as He/She
wills (each has upheld a strong stake in the "femininity" of Deity).
This, then, was a second generation of twentieth-century Bishops who were true Vagantes or
Wanderers, having been born outside the United States--two of them women who received
Episcopal Consecration after coming to the U.S. Each of these Bishops has independently
transmitted a unique heritage that I feel provides an Apostolic bridge to the coming age.
These Bishops have distinguished themselves as spiritual teachers or hierophants whose
Apostolic Gnosis developed through personal devotion and religious experience, rather than
through the channels of dogma and orthodox philosophy. Like Saint Paul, they "conferred not
with flesh and blood" but communed with the inner Spirit of Christ. Their approaches to
spirituality have been very much alike, though drawn from entirely different personal
experiences. They point toward future Apostolic spiritual modalities which must one day prevail
in a world of many religious cultures.