A professor at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bennison will minister to 162 congregations numbering 65,000 members and including Episcopal churches in Philadelphia and four surrounding counties. His election raises the threat of an Episcopal schism, according to observers, between progressives who favor gay-friendly moves and religious conservatives who bitterly oppose them. In mid-July, Episcopalians will meet in Philadelphia for their General Convention. It is expected that Bennison's election and the fallout therefrom will figure pointedly in their presentations.

Last autumn, the Pennsylvanian Episcopal diocese voted by a large majority to endorse the creation of religious rites to celebrate same-sex unions. Conservatives were unhinged by this development and began talking then of breakaway planning.

The current Episcopal Bishop, Allen R. Bartlett, was himself relieved of heresy charges last spring after the clearing at an Episcopal heresy trial of another retired bishop in Wilmington, Delaware, a circumstance some said seemed a revival of medieval behaviors. The retired bishop had, while in office, ordained two openly-gay New Jersey priests. Barlett had followed suit, ordaining two gay priests in Pennsylvania, appointments which, if the well- publicized heresy trial had gone awry, would have found him guilty of the same infraction.

Same-sex love and a firm support for the principle of equality between the sexes stand hand- in-hand, dividing old-style Episcopalians from a new generation of passionate religious devotees. Recognizing as truly "Christian" an approach inclusive of women and gay men and lesbians, the idea of excluding such classes from church services and full-scale participation has become anathema to a Pennsylvania majority.

Philadelphia, in 1974, was also a starting place for the ordination of women as priests. Bishop Barbara C. Harris, suffragan of Massachusetts, and the first female to become an Episcopal bishop, is the incoming bishop's homilist. Her support for him is based, she says, on the fact that he reaches out to demonstrate the unity of the Epioscopal church, refusing to bow before conservative exclusionary policy.

The Reverend Gary L'Hommideau, a conservative Episcopal opponent, predicts a July "firestorm" over Bennigan's election at the upcoming Episcopal General Convention.