Again they studied it, scratched their heads, and carried it back down.
The scene was emblematic of the question vexing many in the Episcopal Church:
Where does Bishop Bennison belong?
From within his Philadelphia-area diocese, and well beyond, come increasing calls for the 67-year-old prelate to retire or be removed - even as he insists he will not go.
Bennison "is more likely to deepen divisions and discredit the church than he is to bring healing or advance our common mission," Bonnie Anderson, president of the policy-making House of Deputies, wrote this month to the denomination's 2.2 million members nationwide.
Even before Anderson's rebuke, at least five rectors or vestries in the diocese - comprising 143 parishes in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester Counties - called on their bishop of a dozen years to step down.
So did the 10-member diocesan standing committee, which ran the diocese in Bennison's absence. It told Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori that Bennison "does not have the trust of the clergy and lay leaders" and asked her "to secure [his] retirement or resignation."
Her spokeswoman declined to say whether a resignation request was on the agenda for the House of Bishops' six-day annual meeting, which began Thursday in Phoenix - with Bennison in attendance.
Before leaving for the meeting, he said he would not step down until his retirement age of 72, even if resolutions were passed asking him to do so. "It would have made no sense to go through all that I went through," he said, "and not come back."
Episcopal law has no provision for removing a bishop whose relationship with a diocese has deteriorated, Anderson said in an interview. But she predicted that such a canon would be considered at the next general convention.
