Religion: The Episcopal Methodist

Canonists, seminarians, as well as Methodist and episcopal laymen across the U.S., were raising eyebrows last week over an ordination as rare as the California condor.

The Episcopal Bishop of the California diocese, with full rubric and laying on of hands, had conferred on a Methodist minister—not Episcopal orders but episcopal orders. As a result, the Rev. George Hedley is still a Methodist, but he wears his Methodism with a difference. Frail-looking but sinewy, George Hedley, 60, is the well-beloved, brilliant father figure and campus character of California's small (700 students) Mills College...