A year ago, Mary Slusser was dreadfully upset about her church. The Anglican Communion was seething, as issues of sexual morality divided it. Two African churches, Nigeria and Uganda, were leading a charge, with a view to schism or expulsion of liberal churches, primarily the Episcopal Church in the United States.

At immediate issue was election in New Hampshire of the openly gay bishop-with-partner, Eugene Robinson. The problems were local, too. A West Chicago parish left the Diocese of Chicago in 2007 for the jurisdiction of Uganda. Even nearby parishes differed in tendency, as they had for decades; Mary Slusser's conservative Christ Church in River Forest and the more liberal Grace Church in Oak Park are obvious examples.

Things have quieted down, however, in the year since I quizzed her about it. "It's the Anglican way," she said. "We fuss in public a lot, but are loathe to kick people out of the club. The impetus is dying."

No one's happier than she. As a past vestry member and preacher's kid whose father served as a parish priest in small-town Kansas for 42 years, she cherishes living together in harmony or at least not in conspicuous disharmony. Her father had come to Kansas out of Seabury-Western Seminary, in Evanston, in the heart of the "biretta belt," where (liturgically) Episcopalians "all but embraced the Pope."

Her father's was the "via media" (middle way), agreeing to disagree, as it was for the American church in general, she said, "up to 2003, when the Gene Robinson election changed things."

With her father, she embraced the idea that "you minister to everyone, loving one another 'as I have loved you.' Jesus expects it. There's no asterisk." But she also felt "the pull of tradition" and "the tension between tradition and the imperative to follow Jesus."

"It's not new that there are gay priests," she said. "But today they have the nerve to stop pretending they are straight."

There is a problem, however, "if your sexual identity is more important than your identity as a priest," she said. "The church is not here to prosper your whims. Rather, it comes as servant of the most high and of your fellow humans."

Watching her father, she saw "that nothing he did was for his own gain. But with these people, it's always about what's best for them. They clamor to be acknowledged. But Christianity is not about identity politics. God cares about the soul."

Her father would have opposed Robinson's election, not for his homosexuality, but "because he was adulterous" in taking a partner before he was divorced from his wife. In addition, he saw disruption of the church as "a tool of the devil."

"It breaks my heart," she said a year ago. "But I'm going to ride it out and see what happens." This week, she was feeling better.

Jim Bowman, an Oak Parker since childhood, covered religion for the Chicago Daily News from 1968 to its closing in 1978. He has written or co-authored seven books, mostly of corporate history but also about Catholic prayer and practice.