Three Episcopal Church dioceses based in Wisconsin have voted in favor of a measure to unify into a single regional body, a proposal that still needs approval from the denomination.
Last week, the Episcopal dioceses of Eau Claire, Fond du Lac and Milwaukee held a joint special convention in Baraboo, where clergy and lay leaders overwhelmingly voted to become one regional body.
The Episcopal Wisconsin Trialogue website announced the results of the vote on Saturday, with Eau Claire clergy and laity voting 52-2 in favor, Fond du Lac clergy and laity voting 86-20 in favor and Milwaukee clergy and laity voting 213-7 in favor.
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If the merger is approved by the 81st General Convention in June, the new Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin will have approximately 11,500 baptized members and 101 member congregations.
The new diocese would be led by the Rev. Matthew Gunter, the bishop of Fond du Lac, bishop provisional of Eau Claire and assisting bishop in Milwaukee, reported Episcopal News Service.
Efforts to merge the three dioceses date back to 2021, when a steering committee began convening task forces to investigate the possibility amid declining membership.
The proposal to merge the three bodies had been called a “reunification,” as all three entities derive their existence from a single Diocese of Wisconsin created in 1847.
Gunter said in an April 2022 video that “the world is changing” and “the Church, as we are right now, is not ready to engage with the realities and the people shaped by them.”
“We need to adapt,” Gunter said at the time. “With two of the bishops of the dioceses in Wisconsin retiring at the end of 2020, we have an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we are organized.”
“To become one diocese, not just to create a bigger version of what we have been, but to look at what it might mean to reconfigure ourselves and organize ourselves as a diocese, so that we can be about mission.”
Last October, the three dioceses each separately approved a resolution at their annual conventions that would allow for a final vote on the issue sometime in late April or early May.
The resolution passed in Eau Claire with 91.5% support and in Milwaukee with 92% support. It was less popular in Fond du Lac, where the regional body leadership held a roll call vote in which 61.2% of the laity and 76% of the clergy voted yes.