The Diocese of Florida hopes the third time will be the charm. Its Standing Committee unveiled plans on March 31 that should lead to the election of a new diocesan bishop in the fall of 2026, a very rare third attempt to choose the successor to Bishop Samuel Johnson (John) Howard, who retired in October 2023.
“After lots of prayer, digging in Scripture, meeting with lots of diocesan leaders, the Standing Committee is officially calling for a bishop election,” said the Rev. Sarah Minton, the committee’s chair, in a video accompanying the announcement.
The announcement said a special convention will be held on June 16 to adopt rules and procedures for the election, and that canonically resident clergy who do not have a ministry cure need to register to vote at the meeting no later than April 15. The proposed election rules and procedures will be released by May 15.
In the aftermath of the diocese’s two failed elections of the Rev. Charlie Holt as its bishop in 2022, Holt’s traditional views on marriage dominated conversation across the church. But election procedures and questions about canonical residency, which qualifies clerics to vote in such an election, were also deeply important.
After Holt’s first election in May 2022, objectors made 38 allegations of irregularities in the election, including the absence of a quorum of two-thirds of all canonically resident clergy. A Court of Review found merit in some of the objections three months later, and Holt withdrew his acceptance of the nomination shortly afterward.
Another group of clergy and delegates filed objections to Holt’s second election in November 2022. The most high-profile of these objections was about the rules by which the diocese granted and withheld canonical residency to clergy exercising ministry in its churches. The objectors claimed that 11 clergy exercising ministry in the diocese had been refused canonical residency because of their progressive views on same-sex marriage.
A second Court of Review sided with the objectors, ruling that there was evidence of “a pattern and practice of discrimination” against LGBT clergy and those who opposed Bishop Howard’s views in the granting of canonical residency. Florida’s Standing Committee pushed back hard against the decision, claiming that the Court of Review misunderstood the canons and did not carefully investigate the claims of alleged discrimination.
The Court of Review’s findings, however, became one of several disciplinary charges lodged against Bishop Howard, and Holt’s second election was nullified in July 2023, after it failed to secure the consents of a majority of the Episcopal Church’s bishops and standing committees.
A hearing panel in Howard’s Title IV cases is scheduled for April 30, but Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe issued a letter in February saying that progress continued toward an accord that would resolve the matter.
The Standing Committee’s requirement that canonically resident clergy without cure register to vote at the June special convention doesn’t relate directly to the issues raised after the second election about discrimination against LGBT and progressive clergy.
But that step, which the diocese said it was requiring for the first time, signals that the convention will likely consider revisions to the way in which canonical residency factors into elections.
During discussions about procedural matters after the first election, diocesan leaders pointed out several times that because the diocese is in an area popular with retirees, it has an unusually large number of clergy without cure, a factor that can make achieving an election quorum of two-thirds of canonically resident clergy hard to meet.
At last September’s diocesan convention, the former Standing Committee chair, the Rev. Teresa Seagle, told delegates that leaders were working in several areas to prepare for the election of a new bishop, including “the ordination process, finances, website and communication, caring for souls, human resources, and the canons and constitution.”
Delegates were also updated then on a healing process led by retired bishop Mary Gray Reeves that has sought reconciliation in the aftermath of divisions over the two elections and the stormy departure of Bishop Howard.
Convention delegates also considered a resolution that called for the diocese “to act with haste to begin the process of creating a search process” for the election of Florida’s new bishop.
The resolution’s proposers, the Rev. Dr. Jon Davis of St. Mark’s, Palatka, and the Rev. Matt Marino of Trinity, Saint Augustine, said that the delay in electing a bishop made it harder to recruit “A-list clergy,” raise up ordinands, increase the sustainability of the diocese’s struggling summer camp, and cast a “unifying vision” for the diocese.
Originally, they told TLC, their resolution had set a deadline of the first quarter of 2025 to start the process, but they made the resolution’s timing aspirational, given concerns in the diocese about tying the Standing Committee’s hands.
After a tense discussion, Florida’s delegates postponed the resolution indefinitely, by a vote of 131-56. But the Standing Committee delivered within the original timeframe, by one day.
Marino told TLC that he wasn’t surprised. He said that last December, the Standing Committee asked the Diocesan Council, on which he serves, “when they thought we would be ready, and 80 percent of the room said, ‘We are ready now.’ The other 20 percent said, ‘First quarter of 2025.’”
The Very Rev. Kate Moorhead Carroll, dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville, who spoke in favor of postponing Davis and Marino’s resolution last September, said that she now thought the time was right.
“The Standing Committee and the Diocesan Council have worked diligently to clarify and update the diocesan bylaws, as well as to catch up on the diocesan audits. I do believe that we are ready to begin the process of searching for our next bishop,” she said.
The Diocese of Florida was a partner of the Living Church Foundation during the ministry of Bishop John Howard.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.
