The coastal California Diocese of El Camino Real elected as its next Bishop the Ven. Mary Gray-Reeves, Archdeacon for the Diocese of Southeast Florida, June 16 on the second ballot.

She will replace the Rt. Rev. Richard L. Shimpfky who resigned for health reasons in March 2004. In the interim, the diocese, which stretches from Silicon Valley to the edge of San Luis Obispo, has been led by Assisting Bishop Sylvestre Romero.

Speaking in English and Spanish, Archdeacon Gray-Reeves, a native of Miami, addressed the convention via telephone.

“Today we begin a tangible and public ministry, united as one in the body of Christ in El Camino Real, discovering and carrying out Christ’s vision for the work of God’s Kingdom in this place,” she said.

Archdeacon Gray-Reeves was one of five candidates, four nominated by the search committee and one nominated by petition. The petition candidate, the Rev. David Breuer, rector of St. Luke’s, Los Gatos, was the only local candidate.

Archdeacon Gray-Reeves had clearly impressed the delegates during the five walkabouts earlier in the month, which had drawn more than 1,000 parishioners. She received 63 of the 114 clergy votes and 101 of the 206 lay votes on the first ballot. With three more lay votes, Ms. Gary-Reeves would have received the necessary majorities.

Fr. Breuer placed second with 27 and 41 votes respectively. Each of the candidates was informed of the ballot results, and the Rev. Paige Blair, rector of St. George’s, York Harbor, Maine, withdrew.

The other candidates, including the Rev. Gale Davis Morris, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Acton, Mass., and the Rev. John Palarine, rector of the Church of Our Savior in Jacksonville, Fla., remained on the second ballot, but from the buzz among the delegates it was clear that Archdeacon Gray-Reeves would have the necessary votes.

The second ballot total gave her 91 clergy votes and 163 lay votes — far beyond the necessary majorities.

Among the other candidates, Fr. Palarine may have hurt his chances when he stopped short of saying that he believed in the full inclusion of gay and lesbian parishioners in the rites and rituals of the church. The other candidates, including the bishop-elect, said that they did.

Archdeacon Gray-Reeves told parishioners at one walkabout June 8 that she was one of only two priests and one bishop in Florida to have voted as delegates to affirm the election of the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire. She said she doubted that she could be called to serve in another church in Florida as a result of that vote.

Her experience as an archdeacon assisting a bishop may have helped elevate her candidacy above the others.

“She’s been acting in the name of a bishop for several years,” said Bill Donaldson, a lay delegate from Good Shepherd, Salinas, Calif. “She is ready to become a bishop.”

She told parishioners that growing up in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami she was surrounded by gays, lesbians and people of many different cultures.

“I never questioned the presence of gay and lesbian people,” she said.

Her fluency in Spanish was another plus in a diocese in which six of the 50 parishes are Spanish-speaking and also the fastest growing.

Hispanic Christians “are looking for something between Protestant evangelical and Roman,” says Rev. Mario Hauttecoeur, the Cuban-born vicar of Cristo Rey Church in Watsonville. The four-year-old mission has grown from 15 parishioners to 200. “We are the via media.”

Assuming a majority of standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction consent to her election, Archdeacon Gray-Reeves will be invested in Salinas, Calif., on Nov. 10.

Timothy Roberts

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