Rebecca Droke, Post-Gazette The Rev. Dr. Harold T. Lewis, rector at the Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside, is part of the ongoing dispute over gay and lesbian participation in the church. Click photo for larger image. Related story: Anglicans face danger of split, bishop reports

Calvary Episcopal Church is 44,000 square feet of Gothic Revival prominence in the middle of Shadyside. Members during its 152-year history have included industrialists, philanthropists and city leaders; its wealth and influence are well known far beyond the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

That prominent role has grown more pronounced during the past several years as the church and its rector, the Rev. Dr. Harold T. Lewis, have become de facto opposition leaders to Pittsburgh Bishop Robert W. Duncan and his role in the wider church's debate over homosexuality and the denomination's future.

Dr. Lewis euphemistically refers to those issues as "the recent unpleasantness," but it goes far deeper. He and his church are pariahs in a diocese overwhelmingly supportive of its bishop and his ongoing leadership of a network of biblically conservative dioceses unhappy with the direction of the national church and eager to gain acceptance as the "true" American church in the eyes of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Outwardly, Dr. Lewis is unruffled by the diocese's disquiet. He is as he has always been: publicly stolid, forward-looking, a substantial man moving with equal ease in the worlds of religion, arts and politics. Both he and his church have long traditions of pursuing social justice, and of being leaders and supporters of community programs.

It's only when discussing his relationship with Bishop Duncan that his demeanor changes. The recollection of the bishop's public threat in 2004 to exclude Calvary and a second parish from the diocese because of a lawsuit over control of church property still hurts.

"The bishop's spurious and specious attempt was the most underhanded, shameful thing he'd ever done," Dr. Lewis said, "because he knows and I know that he was canonically on not only slippery ground but on no grounds.

"He made us into unbiblical people, a people not respecting the bishop, of being bad."

For Dr. Lewis, who was raised in a strict Anglo-Catholic parish in Brooklyn where clergy were considered a little lower than angels and the bishop's annual visit was a widely anticipated event, "it grieves me to be at odds with my bishop.

"I hope people don't think I enjoy this," he said. "I feel bound to present another point of view to the prevailing point of view because I feel the prevailing view is uncharitable and misguided and wrong."

Through a spokesman, Bishop Duncan declined to be interviewed for this article, as did other diocesan leaders.

The contentiousness between the two men, however, has spread beyond anything personal or theological. Dr. Lewis has been booed at a diocesan convention and accused of conducting same-sex unions at Calvary. ("It has never happened here," he said.) He also has been blamed for potentially costing the diocese hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees stemming from Calvary's current lawsuit.

Although he denies it's a response directly connected to such criticism, he has declined to attend diocesan Eucharists, fellowships and events. In an open letter to the diocese last year, Dr. Lewis urged Calvary members not to participate in the diocese's plans for a 2008 celebration marking the 250th anniversary of Anglican worship in Pittsburgh, since he did not want anyone to think he or Calvary supported the bishop's position.

"Harold has a very high opinion of himself and he isn't afraid to share it," said the Rev. David D. Wilson, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Kittanning and a member of the diocese's standing committee. "He kind of looks at the rest of the diocese from his lofty position. There is an air of arrogance."

Unwilling to back down

Part of that perception may stem from Dr. Lewis' educational background -- master of divinity from Yale, a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham (England), further graduate studies in three other countries -- and part from his broad experience as a foreign missionary, a parish priest and director of the Office of Black Ministries at the national church office.

There are two other important factors: his supreme self-confidence and his race. It's not just being brilliant and black in a diocese where only two of 58 rectors are African American and in a 2.2-million-member denomination with less than 3 percent black membership; it's being brilliant and black and not hiding it.

He backs down from nothing, whether it's sending an e-mail about a grammatical error or filing a lawsuit in Common Pleas Court against the diocese, which he did in 2003 over a diocesan resolution that he believed violated church canons. Although the suit was settled in 2005, Dr. Lewis and others filed a petition in December alleging the diocese had breached the settlement.

A recent meeting in Tanzania of Anglican Communion leaders called on lawsuits within the Episcopal Church to be dropped, but Dr. Lewis says he has no intention of doing so.

That willingness to be an outspoken advocate makes him a magnet for supporters in this diocese and elsewhere.

The Rev. Sandye A. Wilson, rector of St. Andrew and Holy Communion Episcopal Church in South Orange, N.J., and a former member of the national church's executive council, first met Dr. Lewis nearly 30 years ago when she was a seminarian and he took her "under his wings to understand the reality in the larger church."

"My impression of him was that he was a brilliant, grounded man of God who was very spiritual and very sophisticated and very much a person who empowers other people to live out their faith and know the Living God," she said.

"He understands what it is to be the 'other' and to be a member of the oppressed."

Roots in Barbados

He didn't always. His roots date back four generations in Barbados, where nearly all Anglicans on the West Indies island are black. He attended a predominantly black Episcopal church in Brooklyn, serving as an altar boy, in the choir and as a head of a youth group.

He planned to join the diplomatic corps or serve at the United Nations. A parish priest suggested a career in ministry.

Dr. Lewis was surprised to be the only black in his seminary class.

"To me, the Episcopal Church had been a black experience," he said. "For many years the only white Episcopalian I ever saw was the bishop of Long Island who came for confirmation."

He served parishes in England, Washington, D.C., and New Haven, Conn., before spending 11 years at the church's New York national office. He was interim rector at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn in 1995 when he wowed three members of a search committee from Calvary who were interviewing him for their parish's top position.

He arrived in Pittsburgh in September 1996 promising to be "a prophetic voice." He didn't realize, he said, that would mean becoming the dominant voice on one side of the sexuality debate.

"The thing that bothers me about the immutability [of the Bible] argument is that people point to the seven or eight verses that people like to point to that say that homosexuality is off the charts," he said. "But in the holiness codes, there are all kinds of statements and all kinds of justifications for putting people to death, like sassing your parents or not trimming your beard properly or wearing two kinds of cloth."

The church's views change, he said, citing divorce and race as examples. Interpretations by Europeans or wealthy scholars or the Roman Catholic Church are being challenged now by what Dr. Lewis calls, "the eyes of the oppressed." It's the same Bible, he says, but different eyes are now interpreting it.

What remains unchanging for Dr. Lewis is his love of being Episcopalian. He relishes the lore of the Episcopal Church, the cliches about its members, the sense that confrontation ultimately will be avoided and "at the end of the day we can have a drink and everything will be just fine."

"I'm not as liberal as people think," he said. "I think people, if they came to Calvary, would be surprised at how traditional and how liturgically conservative our worship is. There's a very strong conservative streak in me, a conservative foundation."