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Anglican, Lutheran leaders in Canada call for day of prayer and fasting for peace on Feb. 16

Episcopal News Service - sex, 02/02/2024 - 12:04

[Anglican Church of Canada] The Most Rev. Linda Nicholls, archbishop and primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and Bishop Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, have issued an invitation to members of both churches to participate in a day of prayer and fasting on Feb. 16 for those impacted by conflicts in Israel/Gaza and Ukraine.

They said in a joint statement, “These conflicts show no signs of ending soon. Our hearts are filled with pain as we watch this human tragedy unfold yet feel powerless to help. We do know that God continues to be present with us and with all who are suffering. We can lift our voices and hearts in united prayer, trusting that God is listening and acting.”

They invited people to choose how they might fast, including “from food or from social media, computer time, music, television or whatever is appropriate for you. During the day, whenever your heart remembers or at times you designate, you stop and pray.”

The day will conclude at 7 p.m. Eastern with a joint time of prayer broadcast live via Facebook.

Read the entire article here.

Church of England, Roman Catholic bishops meet in Norwich

Episcopal News Service - sex, 02/02/2024 - 11:37

[Church of England] More than 40 bishops from the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales have taken part in shared worship, prayer, conversation and a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Julian in a two-day meeting in Norwich. The joint meeting was hosted at the Roman Catholic and Anglican cathedrals in the city.

Among those attending from the Church of England were the Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury; and the Most Rev.  Stephen Cottrell, archbishop of York. Leaders from the Roman Catholic Church included the archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, as well as the archbishops of Birmingham, Liverpool and Southwark.

The joint meetings have been held about every two years since 2006. The venues hosting the meetings have been Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London and Norwich.

Read the entire article here.

Scottish Episcopal Church’s new empowerment coordinator enhances Net Zero team

Episcopal News Service - qui, 01/02/2024 - 12:05

[Scottish Episcopal Church] Bethany Nelson has begun her work as Net Zero empowerment coordinator for the Scottish Episcopal Church. She will be responsible for supporting the implementation of the Net Zero Action Plan and empowering and encouraging all the diocesan environment groups across Scotland.

Since January 2022 she had been the convenor of the Edinburgh Diocesan Environment Group.

“I am passionate about God’s call on us to care for creation, and to partner with the Holy Spirit in this challenging and important work,” Nelson said. “I am excited to start my new role at the Scottish Episcopal Church and am looking forward to expanding my experience across Scotland, bringing encouragement and hope for our Net Zero journey.”

Read the entire article here.

Episcopal parishes, dioceses to commemorate the life and work of Absalom Jones, the church’s first Black priest

Episcopal News Service - qui, 01/02/2024 - 12:01

Portrait of Absalom Jones by Philadelphia artist Raphaelle Peale in 1810.

[Episcopal News Service] Feb. 13 is the Feast Day of the Rev. Absalom Jones, who in 1802 became the first Black person ordained a priest in The Episcopal Church, and in coming weeks, services and activities are planned in dioceses and parishes across the church to remember this trailblazer.

Jones was born into slavery in Delaware in 1846 and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1762 with the man who owned him. Together they attended St. Peter’s Church, where he met and married Mary Thomas, an enslaved woman who also worshiped there. Jones and his father-in-law were able to buy Mary’s freedom, but he remained enslaved until 1784, when his owner granted him his freedom. He helped form the Free African Society, a mutual aid benevolent organization, which ultimately led to the founding of the African Church of Philadelphia.

Soon after, church members voted to seek affiliation with The Episcopal Church, and Jones was asked to provide pastoral leadership. In October 1794 it was admitted to the Diocese of Pennsylvania as the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first Black Episcopal congregation in the United States. Bishop William White – the second bishop of the newly formed Episcopal Church – ordained Jones as deacon in 1795 and as priest on Sept. 21, 1802. The church grew to more than 500 members during its first year, and parishioners formed a day school and were active in self-empowerment and anti-slavery activities. Jones died on Feb. 13, 1818.

Jones’ feast day also comes during Black History Month, and the Archives of The Episcopal Church has an online exhibit about his life and contributions, as well as those of other Black Episcopalians, entitled “The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice.”

In addition, The Episcopal Church has created the Absalom Jones Fund to help support historically Black colleges and universities affiliated with The Episcopal Church since the 1800s. The fund offers bulletin inserts for Feb. 11 to help parishioners learn more.

The following is a list of some events honoring Jones hosted by Episcopal churches and dioceses. Check online for additional events. All times listed are local.

African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas – The church that Jones founded in Philadelphia will commemorate him on Feb. 11 at 10 a.m. with its annual Mardi Gras Jazz Mass. The featured preacher will be the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, canon to the presiding bishop for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care. Also participating will be members of Christ Church, Philadelphia; St. Peter’s, Philadelphia; and Church Farm School.

Diocese of New York – The Diocese of New York will host a service at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City on Feb. 3 at 10:30 a.m. New York Bishop Andrew Dietsche will be the celebrant, with the Rev. Yejide Peters Pietersen, associate dean and director of formation at Berkeley Divinity School of Yale University, preaching. Music will include jazz luminaries and the music of Duke Ellington. A festival choir of volunteers will sing, and the service will be livestreamed.

Diocese of Long Island – The Diocese of Long Island and the Black Clergy Caucus will host a service  on Feb. 3 at 11 a.m. at St. Philp’s, Brooklyn, New York. Long Island Bishop Lawrence C. Provenzano will preside, and the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, national executive director of the Multifaith Initiative to End Mass Incarceration, will preach.

Diocese of Western North Carolina –  The Diocese of Western North Carolina will partner with St. Matthias‘, Asheville, North Carolina, to celebrate a service on Feb. 3 at 11 a.m. at the church. The Rt. Rev. José A. McLoughlin will celebrate, and the speaker will be preacher and theologian Mark Andrew Jefferson.

Diocese of Michigan – The Diocese of Michigan will celebrate a Holy Eucharist at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Detroit, Michigan on Feb. 3 at 4 p.m. The Very Rev. Barry Randolph, pastor of Church of The Messiah Detroit, will preach.

Diocese of Washington – The Diocese of Washington and the Crummell-Cooper chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians will offer a service on Feb. 4 at 3 p.m. at St. Andrew’s, College Park, Maryland. The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of Washington, will be the celebrant, and the Rev. Ricardo Sheppard, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C., will be the preacher.

Cathedral of St. Paul – The Cathedral of St. Paul in Erie, Pennsylvania, will host a community event on Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. The service will feature the Cathedral Choir, choirs of Mercyhurst University and instrumentalists.

Diocese of West Missouri – The Diocese of Werst Missouri will offer a Eucharist on Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m. at St. Augustine’s in Kansas City, Missouri. The diocese’s bishop provisional, the Rt. Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce will be the celebrant, and the Rev. Rita Kendagor will preach.

Diocese of Pittsburgh – The Diocese of Pittsburgh will host a celebration of the life of the Rev. Absalom Jones and Bishop Barbara Harris on Feb. 10 at 10 a.m. at Trinity Cathedral, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Rt. Rev.  Gayle Harris, assistant bishop of the Diocese of Virginia, will be the preacher. The event is sponsored by the Commission on Race and Reconciliation and the Beloved Community Initiative.

Diocese of California – The Diocese of California will offer a service on Feb. 10 at 10 a.m. St. Aidan’s, San Francisco. The celebrant and preacher will be California Bishop Marc Andrus. The event is sponsored by the Northern California/Vivian Traylor Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians and the African American Commission of the diocese.

Diocese of Missouri – The Diocese of Missouri’s Dismantling Racism Commission will host its annual celebration of Absalom Jones on Feb. 10 beginning at 11 a.m. at St. Timothy’s, Creve Coeur, Missouri. The day will begin with a worship service led by Missouri Bishop Deon Johnson, and the guest preacher will be Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton. Featured will be the diocesan Gospel Choir, led by Harry Moppins. After the service all are invited to stay for lunch and workshops led by the Dismantling Racism Commission. The theme of this year’s event is Revive, Renew, Restart: Equipping Beloved Community.

Diocese of Ohio – The Diocese of Ohio will celebrate the Consecration of the Rt. Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris and the commemoration of the Rev. Absalom Jones on Feb. 10 at 1 p.m. at Church of Our Saviour, Akron, Ohio. The service is presented by the president, officers and members of the Wilma Ruth Combs Northeast Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, along with the Diocese of Ohio and Church of Our Saviour, Akron.

Diocese of Southwest Florida – The Cathedral Church of St. Peter in St. Petersburg, Florida, will be site of events on Feb. 10 beginning at 1 p.m. with a workshop on Afro-centric Liturgical Music with Carl MaultsBy, the director of music and organist at St. Richard’s, Winter Park, Florida. Afterward will be a service of Holy Eucharist with readings from influential Black voices in The Episcopal Church, including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the Rev. Pauli Murray, the first African American woman ordained to the priesthood. The Rt. Rev. Doug Scharf, bishop of the Diocese of Southwest Florida, will be celebrant and preacher. The events are hosted by the Diocese of Southwest Florida, the John E. Culmer Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, St. James House of Prayer, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church and the Cathedral Church of St. Peter.

The Church of the Holy Cross – The Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross in Decatur, Georgia, will be the site of a service on Feb. 10 at 3 p.m. with the Rt. Rev. Robert C. Wright, bishop of the Diocese of Atlanta, preaching, and the Rev. Dennis Patterson Jr., presiding. The event is hosted by the Union of Black Episcopalians Atlanta chapter.

St. Michael and All AngelsSt. Michael and All Angels, Tallahassee, Florida, along with St. John’s in Tallahassee, will host a joint service on Feb. 11 at 10 a.m.

Episcopal Church in MinnesotaSt. John’s in St. Paul, Minnesota, will be the site of a service on Feb. 11 at 2 p.m. hosted by the Episcopal Church in Minnesota; Holy Trinity, Minneapolis; and St. John’s. The Rev. Jeckonia Okoth, diocesan missioner for multicultural ministries, will celebrate, with the Rev. Craig Lemming, associate rector at St. John’s, preaching.

Diocese of Pennsylvania – The Diocese of Pennsylvania is hosting activities on Feb. 17 beginning at 10 a.m. at Episcopal Academy, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. Choral performances will begin the day, and a service of Holy Eucharist will take place at 11 a.m. Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel G. P. Gutiérrez will celebrate, and the preacher will be the Rev. Ronald C. Byrd, The Episcopal Church’s missioner for African descent ministries.

St. JamesSt. James, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, will host a variety of activities on Feb. 17 beginning at 1 p.m. being offered through the Bishop Nathan Baxter Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians. Activities include a community choir workshop; a reception and discussion of “Inside Out: Spiritual Guide for Pre-teen and Teen Girls” with author Brenda Spencer; and a worship service featuring guest preacher the Rev. Ricardo Sheppard from Atonement Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.

Diocese of West Tennessee –  The Diocese of West Tennessee, along with the the Edward Demby Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, will host several activities on Feb. 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., both in-person at the diocese’s Barth House and online. Activities will include a presentation, an historical reenactment and a panel discussion.

Diocese of Massachusetts – The Diocese of Massachusetts has rescheduled is planned Absalom Jones Day observance to April 7 at 4 p.m. at St. Cyprian’s, Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, the diocese’s bishop, will preside, and the Rev. James Hairston will preach. It previously had been set for Feb. 11.

–Melodie Woerman is a freelance writer and former director of communications for the Diocese of Kansas.

Church Divinity School of the Pacific to withdraw from Graduate Theological Union

Episcopal News Service - qua, 31/01/2024 - 16:24

Students at Church Divinity School of the Pacific during a recent graduation ceremony on the campus in Berkeley, California. Photo: CDSP

[Episcopal News Service] Church Divinity School of the Pacific on Jan. 29 announced that in January 2026 it will withdraw from the Graduate Theological Union, a consortium of multi-faith institutions in Berkeley, California, that CDSP helped found in 1962.

The announcement from Stephen Fowl, the seminary’s president and dean since Aug. 1, 2023, said that after the school moves to a fully hybrid model for Master of Divinity students beginning in the summer of 2025, few opportunities will exist for the kind of collaboration GTU has afforded students in the past.

A year ago the seminary described plans for the new hybrid educational model in a joint announcement with Trinity Church Wall Street. In 2019, CDSP announced a new cooperative agreement with the New York church that affected leadership and governance.

In the withdrawal announcement, Fowl said the seminary’s new model would “focus the mission of the school’s credit-bearing academic programs on preparing priests for The Episcopal Church, which means we will not be accepting MA, MTS or Ph.D. students for the foreseeable future.” And with students able to live anywhere and visit the campus only for required on-site sessions, they would have few opportunities to take classes offered through GTU or to use its campus library.

In response to questions posed by Episcopal News Service by email, Fowl noted that both the cost of being a part of GTU and the ongoing lack of opportunities for students to engage there led to the decision to leave the consortium. The announcement was made now, he said, because GTU partners are legally obligated to give two years’ notice before withdrawing.

Rather than partnering with another institution, the model the seminary has developed “relies much more on cooperation between CDSP and the local contexts across The Episcopal Church where our students live, work and will serve after graduation,” Fowl said. He added that students in the new hybrid program can qualify for a fully funded two-year curacy after graduation.

CDSP currently has 53 enrolled students, he said, and 11 of them are part of two existing residential classes and live in Berkeley. Another 31 students are part of the hybrid program, which he said was nearly full. “Our hybrid students consistently tell us that this program is what made it possible to answer God’s call to serve as a priest, and that the community they form onsite and online is tight-knit and life-giving,” he said.

Fowl acknowledged that the seminary and its campus had been a special place for alumni, many of whom had “life-changing experiences” taking classes through GTU, but the move from the residential model they experienced to hybrid learning required a different approach.

“If we thought our residential program was sustainable in today’s climate, we might have made a different choice,” he told ENS. “We believe continuing to improve our well-respected hybrid program is the way we can best serve The Episcopal Church.”

–Melodie Woerman is a freelance writer and former director of communications for the Diocese of Kansas.

Archbishop of Canterbury says plan to send migrants to Rwanda undermines country’s global standing

Episcopal News Service - qua, 31/01/2024 - 11:24

[Religion News Service — London] The leader of the Church of England said on Jan. 29 that Britain will undermine its standing in the world if it enacts a government plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said U.K. politicians were seeking to “outsource our moral and legal responsibility for asylum seekers and refugees.”

Speaking as a member of Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, Welby said that “a pick-and-choose approach to international law undermines our global standing.”

“We can, as a nation, do better than this bill,” he said.

Members of the Lords on Monday began debating the government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill, which is designed to overcome a legal block on a plan to send migrants who reach Britain across the English Channel in small boats to the East African country.

The policy, under which the asylum-seekers would stay permanently in Rwanda, is key to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” bringing unauthorized migrants to the U.K. Sunak argues that deporting unauthorized asylum-seekers will deter people from making risky journeys and break the business model of people-smuggling gangs.

No one has yet been sent to Rwanda under the plan, which human rights groups call inhumane and unworkable. The U.K. Supreme Court ruled in November that the policy was illegal because Rwanda isn’t a safe country for refugees.

In response to the court ruling, Britain and Rwanda signed a treaty pledging to strengthen protections for migrants. Sunak’s Conservative government argues the treaty allows it to pass a law declaring Rwanda a safe destination.

If approved by Parliament, the law will allow the government to “disapply” sections of U.K. human rights law when it comes to Rwanda-related asylum claims and make it harder to challenge the deportations in court.

Conservative Lords member Keith Stewart, speaking for the government in the Lords, said the bill “puts beyond legal doubt the safety of Rwanda” and would “deter people from taking unsafe and illegal routes into the country.”

The bill was approved by the House of Commons earlier this month, though only after 60 members of Sunak’s governing Conservatives rebelled in an effort to make the legislation tougher.

Many members of the Lords want to defeat or water down the bill. Unlike the Commons, the governing Conservatives do not hold a majority of seats in the Lords.

Ultimately, the upper house can delay and amend legislation but can’t overrule the elected Commons. Its members on Monday rejected a bid by the opposition Liberal Democrats to toss out the bill, sending it on for further scrutiny.

But the strength of opposition aired in the chamber on Monday suggested the bill is in for a long, hard fight over the coming weeks.

Former Labour interior minister David Blunkett called it a “shoddy” bill, while Terence Etherton, a former High Court judge, said it was “a travesty.”

Peter Hennessy, an eminent historian, said that if the bill becomes law, “the government will have removed us from the list of rule-of-law nations.”

Liberal Democrat politician Mike German said the legislation “treats some of the most vulnerable people in the world — people who are facing persecution, torture and fleeing for their lives — as undesirable.”

Michigan Episcopal leaders participate in gun violence prevention summit

Episcopal News Service - ter, 30/01/2024 - 18:11

Michigan Bishop Bonnie Perry moderated a “Faith Leadership for Gun Violence Prevention” panel session at a virtual gun violence prevention summit on Jan. 30, 2024. During the Jan. 29-30 summit, Michigan legislators, gun-safety experts and faith leaders discussed the state’s three new gun safety laws, which will go into effect on Feb. 13. Photo: Screenshot

[Episcopal News Service] Leaders from the Diocese of Michigan joined state legislators and gun-safety experts in a gun violence prevention summit Jan. 29-30 in Detroit to discuss the state’s three new gun safety laws, which will go into effect in February.

Michigan Bishop Bonnie Perry and Vicki Schroeder, a social justice advocate and parishioner at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Saugatuck, Diocese of Western Michigan, both were instrumental in launching End Gun Violence Michigan, a grassroots group credited with helping the gun safety laws pass. Perry — who is also a member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, a network of more than 100 Episcopal bishops working to curtail gun violence — co-led a Jan. 30 panel titled “Faith Leadership for Gun Violence Prevention,” with the Very Rev. Chris Yaw, rector of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Southfield, and other local faith leaders. Perry also moderated a panel welcoming Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist at the summit’s opening session a day earlier. 

“[End Gun Violence Michigan] is a multifaceted movement with a variety of groups that were doing good work before, but doing amazing work now that we’re working together,” Perry told Episcopal News Service on Jan. 30. “Advocating for gun safety is a way of respecting the dignity of every human being.”

About 1,100 people registered for the virtual summit, according to Perry and organizers from End Gun Violence Michigan, which co-sponsored the summit with the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and other gun safety advocacy organizations.

The summit’s panel discussions included experts addressing how teachers, law enforcement, health care professionals, community organizers and activists can implement Michigan’s new gun safety laws, which were signed in 2023. Panelists also discussed the new gun safety laws in the contexts of youth advocacy, suicide prevention, community violence intervention and community activism. Speakers and panelists included U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and others.

One of the new laws includes requiring universal background checks for gun purchase. The same law also requires that guns be locked in storage. Michigan also established a red flag law — also known as an extreme risk law or temporary transfer law — which gives law enforcement agencies the authority to temporarily remove firearms from individuals who “could be dangerous.” Currently, 21 states have implemented some sort of red flag law.

Additionally, anyone convicted of domestic violence is no longer allowed access to firearms for eight years after finishing their sentence.

“This sensible legislation is not about gun control, but about the people of Michigan making clear that we all want to be safer,” Perry said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the gun safety measures into law in response to two mass shootings that have occurred in schools since she became governor in 2019, one in 2023 at Michigan State University in East Lansing and another in 2021 at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, north of Detroit. All three new laws will go into effect on Feb. 13, the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Michigan State.

“These aren’t Democratic values, and these aren’t Republican values. I think these are gospel values,” Perry said. “These are pragmatic policies for safer gun ownership and preventing avoidable deaths.”

The summit took place while Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford High School shooter, is standing trial for her alleged role in the shooting. She and her husband, James Crumbley, have pleaded not guilty to four charges of involuntary manslaughter. If convicted, both parents face up to 15 years in prison. James Crumbley’s trial is scheduled for March.

“As people of faith who have seen how God has worked to bring about justice through the meager things that we offer, we need to serve as a real inspiration and a reminder to reclaim the truth of the message of justice,” Yaw said during the “Faith Leadership for Gun Violence Prevention” panel session. “With gun violence and gun safety, we need to pave a way to reclaim justice with peace.”

On average, 1,187 Michiganders die annually from gun violence, according to data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Jan. 30, nationwide 3,253 people have died from gun violence this year, including 32 from mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an American nonprofit that catalogs every gun-related death in the United States. A mass shooting is any shooting in which at least four people are shot. Still, most U.S. gun deaths are suicides.

“Every single death from a gun is avoidable; this is a uniquely American way to die,” Perry said. 

Episcopalians can learn more about the church’s gun safety legislation dating to 1976 here.

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

WCC, Indonesian churches share ‘a language of love and acceptance’

Episcopal News Service - ter, 30/01/2024 - 17:51

[World Council of Churches] As World Council of Churches general secretary the Rev. Jerry Pillay began his visit to Indonesia, he greeted church leaders and communities with warm words.

“It’s a great joy and a privilege for me to be with you today, and to bring you greetings on behalf of the World Council of Churches,” he said. “Our 352 member churches in 120 countries in the world with almost 600 million people join me in bringing greetings to you.”

Pillay is participating in the Persekutuan Gereja-gereja di Indonesia (Communion of Churches in Indonesia) annual meeting, as well as visiting member churches and government leaders.

Read the entire article here.

Executive Council previews ‘legendary Louisville’ hospitality as 81st General Convention approaches

Episcopal News Service - seg, 29/01/2024 - 14:16

The 81st General Convention will convene June 23-28 at the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville, a facility that completed a major expansion and renovation in 2018. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Louisville, Kentucky] Executive Council was running ahead of schedule on Jan. 28 when the Rev. Michael Barlowe, its secretary, rose to address The Episcopal Church governing body’s members. They had just voted to advance a 2025-27 churchwide budget plan totaling $143 million, and with a day left before the meeting’s adjournment, members likely would have some free time.

Barlowe, who also serves as executive officer of General Convention, encouraged the members to sightsee around Louisville, because apart from their scheduled agenda, Executive Council’s Jan. 26-29 meeting here offered a preview of the state’s largest city. Best known for its bourbon and the Kentucky Derby, Louisville will host an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 Episcopalians when the 81st General Convention convenes downtown at the Kentucky International Convention Center from June 23-28.

“It’s an extraordinary city. It’s going to be an extraordinarily blessed convention,” Barlowe said.

The General Convention Office, which Barlowe leads, works with the triennial convention’s host cities to ensure that meeting and hotel facilities are ready to accommodate the weeklong swell of Episcopal bishops, deputies, staff and visitors. Planning for this convention has been ongoing since Louisville was announced as the host city in February 2020. “It’s going to be a huge, loud joyous wonderful proclamation of God’s love,” Barlowe said.

General Convention typically meets every three years and is a hub for legislative activity, networking and fellowship. As a bicameral governing body, it splits its authority between the House of Bishops and House of Deputies. Some of its core duties include adoption of the triennial budget plan, as recommended by Executive Council, and the election of members to various church bodies. Bishops and deputies also consider hundreds of resolutions covering everything from liturgical revisions to the church’s positions on public policy issues.

Some of those resolutions can be found in the Blue Book report that Executive Council approved on Jan. 27. Additional Blue Book reports are due from other interim bodies in the coming weeks, as legislative committees prepare to convene online meetings in advance of the in-person gathering in Louisville.

Much focus at the 81st General Convention will be on electing the next presiding bishop to a nine-year term that starts Nov. 1, while also celebrating the final months in office of the church’s beloved outgoing presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Michael Curry. The Diocese of Kentucky also is eager to showcase its congregations and ministries and its increased emphasis on racial reconciliation, particularly since the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor and that year’s widespread racial justice protests.

Kentucky Bishop Terry White highlighted some of the diocese’s social justice work Jan. 27 in a welcoming speech to Executive Council. “This church’s presence for convention and for the various meetings taking place really boosts us all, to know that we are supported, to know that you see this as an important place to be,” White told Executive Council members. They had gathered for dinner in an intimate 25th-floor ballroom of the Galt House overlooking downtown Louisville and the Ohio River.

Kentucky Bishop Terry White welcomes Executive Council on Jan. 27 in remarks over dinner at the Galt House in downtown Louisville. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

Executive Council, with 38 voting members from all nine of the church’s provinces, is the church’s governing body between meetings of general convention. The Galt House has been its home base for the past four days. The historic hotel and conference center advertises itself as an icon of “legendary Louisville” hospitality, though church leaders noted that the city’s hospitality is hardly limited to one establishment.

The General Convention Office has reserved more than 2,000 rooms at the Galt House and six other downtown hotels in late June to accommodate bishops, deputies, staff members and other leaders from the church’s 109 dioceses who will be in Louisville for some or all of the six legislative days of this General Convention and two addition days of pre-convention events.

Other lodging was reserved at the Omni Hotel, Hyatt Regency, Marriott Downtown, Courtyard by Marriott, SpringHill Suites and Fairfield Inn & Suites. Each hotel is withing a few blocks of the others and centered around the Kentucky International Convention Center, where the House of Bishops and House of Deputies will convene in June.

The glass-walled convention center completed a $207 million renovation and expansion in 2018, and it features a roof-top support structure that eliminates the need for beams in the center of the convention hall. During this weekend’s Executive Council’s, it was hosting a photographers convention.

The General Convention Office also has booked the nearby KFC Yum! Center, the arena where University of Louisville basketball games are played, as the site for a pre-convention revival on June 22. Details of the revival still are in the works, but it is expected to combine elements of the public revival that was a centerpiece of the 79th General Convention in 2018 in Austin, Texas, and the 2023 It’s All About Love festival in Baltimore, Maryland.

The KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville will be the site of a revival on June 22 that will kick off the 81st General Convention. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

The election of a new presiding bishop will occur June 26 at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Louisville – a 200-year-old church across from the Omni Hotel, located in what White, in his Jan. 28 sermon there, jokingly referred to as “the holy part of Louisville.”

The House of Bishops will meet in closed session at the cathedral to choose one of their own from a slate of nominees being developed by the church’s nominating committee, made up of a mix of clergy and lay leaders. The bishops’ pick will be conveyed to the House of Deputies, which will be asked to vote to affirm the election.

Election of a new presiding bishop will take place June 26 at Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

One reason Louisville was selected by the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements is its central United States location within a reasonable drive of several dioceses, which planners hope will boost turnout. This will be a sharp contrast to the more limited gathering in 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland, for the 80th General Convention, which was shortened to four days and conducted under public health restrictions out of concern for the spread of COVID-19.

The six legislative days scheduled in Louisville still are fewer than the typical eight or more at past General Conventions. Even so, planners expect the gathering in Louisville to help generate $20 million to $25 million for the local economy.

Louisville’s draw as a tourist destination arguably starts with its two iconic products: whiskey and horse racing. “You are familiar, of course, with the distilled beverage of my people?” White said in his Jan. 27 remarks to Executive Council, eliciting laughs from the room.

Promotion of that beverage is everywhere in downtown Louisville. “Downtown Is Spirited,” one lamppost sign says, displaying an amber-filled glass casually garnished. A sculpture of rings representing an oversized bourbon barrel frames the Galt House on Fourth Street, marking the beginning of the city’s Bourbon District, also known as the “Birthplace of Bourbonism.” A block east on Main Street is Louisville’s Whiskey Row, or “the Wall Street of Whiskey.”

The bastion of Kentucky horse racing, Churchill Downs, is four miles south of downtown, and though no races were scheduled during Executive Council’s meeting here, the Kentucky Derby will celebrate 150 years on May 4. Evidence of Louisville’s racing culture is as plentiful in downtown as its bourbon references, with horses and jockeys depicted there in myriad murals and statues.

Another pride of Louisville is the hometown legend Muhammad Ali. The boxer, known to the world as “The Greatest,” died in 2016 and is buried east of downtown Louisville in the Cave Hill Cemetery. The Muhammad Ali Center, a block west of the Galt House, presents itself as “much more than a museum” to the boxer, honoring his legacy by “creating change, pursuing justice, and inspiring greatness.”

Murals in downtown Louisville celebrate legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, a Louisville native, and the city’s most famous sport, horse racing. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

And just north of Muhammad Ali Boulevard, Fourth Street becomes a block-long pedestrian mall, Fourth Street Live!, with attractions that include performance space, a bowling alley and a restaurant branded with Food Network star Guy Fieri.

Any visitor to the city is bound to get caught up in the debate over the correct way to pronounce Louisville. A typically safe choice is to swallow the middle syllable, rendering it as “Loo-vull,” though the Louisville Visitor Center assures passersby that other options are available. On its wall, facing the southwest entrance to the convention center, the display text gives equal weight to “Louavul,” “Luhvul,” “Loueville,” “Looaville” and “Loueyvile.”

Kurt Barnes, the church’s chief financial officer, in giving his opening report to Executive Council on Jan. 26, made a point to side with “Loueyville.”

“I’ve heard it pronounced a few other ways,” Barnes said, “but as good Episcopalians, we welcome all pronunciations.”

Members of Executive Council, the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, gather in a circle for prayer Jan. 26 during their four-day meeting at the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

In other business at this meeting of Executive Council, the members voted Jan. 29 to authorize Jane Cisluycis, the church’s acting chief operating officer, to negotiate with the DeKoven Center in Racine, Wisconsin, to potentially relocate The Episcopal Church Archives there from the space Archives currently rents in Austin, Texas.

The Diocese of Kentucky, which includes the western half of the state, has made racial reconciliation and anti-racism work a priority at least since 2016, White said, and those efforts gained urgency after the March 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black EMT, who was shot to death in her home by police executing a “no knock” warrant.

Taylor’s death, along with the killings of other unarmed Black victims, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and George Floyd in Minnesota, fueled a nationwide reckoning that year with the legacy of racism that still can be found embedded in American institutions, including its churches.

In June 2020, Executive Council passed a resolution condemning the killings and approved $150,000 each for the dioceses of Minnesota and Kentucky “support their continuing work of dismantling the systemic racism we have created in this country and still permeates our church and society.” Additional grants of $75,000 each were later approved for the dioceses of Georgia and Atlanta.

Kentucky, though declaring itself a neutral state at the start of the Civil War, had benefited greatly from the slave trade, White noted, and the diocese, too, has had to confront its past complicity with slavery and other forms of racial oppression. As one example, the dean of Christ Church Cathedral during the Civil War, the Very Rev. James Craik, wrote a “horrendous tract” justifying slavery, White said, and the cathedral and the diocese have since publicly repudiated Craik’s words.

Craik also served as president of the House of Deputies from 1862 to 1877. White said he hopes 81st General Convention will join local Episcopalians in a churchwide repudiation of the racism embodied by Craik.

At the same time, White and others in the diocese look forward to playing the roles of gracious hosts showing pride in the local culture. In his remarks to Executive Council, he joked about another iconic Kentucky product – the “chicken of my people,” poultry of the Kentucky-fried variety.

“In our diocese, we use incense of 11 herbs and spices,” White said, again to laughs. “And we have a lot of fun.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

WCC general secretary visits Indonesia, focuses on ‘God’s goodness for all’

Episcopal News Service - seg, 29/01/2024 - 12:56

[World Council of Churches] World Council of Churches general secretary the Rev. Jerry Pillay is visiting Indonesia, where he will speak at the Persekutuan Gereja-gereja di Indonesia (Communion of Churches in Indonesia) annual meeting, as well as visit member churches and government leaders.

Pillay’s keynote speech on Jan. 29 will focus on the theme “To present God’s goodness for all (Matthew 5:45): Emerging Challenges of the ecumenical movement and the role of Asian churches.” Pillay pointed out that this is a very pertinent and relevant theme in the Asian context, especially in Indonesia.

He added, “this is my first visit to Indonesia since assuming the office of WCC general secretary, and I am so much looking forward to interacting with our member churches and others in this context. Indeed, they have so much to contribute to the rich tapestry of ecumenical experience and development.”

Read the entire article here.

Budget tops agenda as Executive Council meets in Louisville in advance of General Convention

Episcopal News Service - sex, 26/01/2024 - 15:55

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris addresses Executive Council on Jan. 26 during its four-day meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include coverage of the Jan. 26 afternoon discussion. 

[Episcopal News Service – Louisville, Kentucky] The Episcopal Church Executive Council, meeting in the host city for the upcoming 81st General Convention, is due to focus much of its four days here on discussion and approval of a 2025-27 churchwide budget plan, setting up final adoption of the $143 million plan in June.

With Presiding Bishop Michael Curry recovering at home in Raleigh, North Carolina, from a medical procedure to address a recurring subdural hematoma, or brain bleed, House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris is chairing the Jan. 26-29 meeting of Executive Council.

“His spirit and leadership remain ever present with us and in our church,” Ayala Harris said in her opening remarks Jan. 26, and she shared words of gratitude from Curry himself for all the prayers for his health.

“Fervid prayer and competent medicine are a powerful partnership,” Curry said in his message to Executive Council, as relayed by Ayala Harris. “Thank you to all of you who have been praying for my family, the medical teams and for me.”

Ayala Harris devoted part of her opening speech to describing a “profoundly moving” pilgrimage to Tanzania that she and two other members of Executive Council, the Rev. Charles Graves and Alice Freeman, joined this month as guests of Episcopal Relief & Development.

“We were there to witness firsthand the partnership between Episcopal Relief & Development and the Anglican dioceses in Tanzania,” she said. “Together they are working to further our collective witness of the love of Jesus Christ.”

The Episcopal pilgrims visited sites in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika to learn about some of the ministries supported by the relief agency, including a savings and lending program devoted to financial empowerment of local residents, especially women.

“The women who run these groups demonstrate for us incredible leadership traits: clarity of role, accountably to one another, desire to give and share one’s gifts together, the building of deep bonds of trust and relationship,” Ayala Harris said.

Executive Council is meeting Jan. 26-29 at the Galt House, a hotel and conference center in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, about a block north of the convention center where the 81st General Convention will be held. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

Graves and Freeman are expected to share more details about the pilgrimage during committee discussions at this meeting of Executive Council, taking place at the Galt House, a historic hotel and conference center overlooking the Ohio River in downtown Louisville.

The hotel is about a block north of the Kentucky International Convention Center, where the 81st General Convention is scheduled to convene June 23-28. One of its central actions will be adoption of a triennial churchwide budget plan, based on recommendations of Executive Council, which is the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention.

The presiding bishop and House of Deputies president serve as chair and vice chair of Executive Council, respectively. Its other 38 voting members are a mix of bishops, other clergy and lay leaders. Twenty are elected by General Convention to staggered six-year terms – or 10 new members every three years. The Episcopal Church’s nine provinces elect the other 18 to six-year terms, also staggered. Meetings typically are held three times a year. The next is schedule for April in Raleigh.

In the afternoon Jan. 26, Executive Council’s Joint Budget Committee presented its $143 million draft plan for 2025-27, which it finalized earlier this month at an in-person meeting. The committee is chaired by the Rev. Patty Downing, an Executive Council member from the Diocese of Delaware. The rest of the committee includes both Executive Council members and other clergy and lay leaders who are familiar with church finances.

Executive Council is to vote on the draft budget plan Jan. 28, after which it will advance for presentation and floor debate at the 81st General Convention in June.

The Joint Budget Committee is recommending that the church maintain its current 15% assessment rate on diocesan income. The assessments are the largest revenue source, 64%, of the churchwide budget. Some dioceses are expected to ask General Convention to cut the rate to as low as 10%, which the committee estimates would create a $30 million shortfall in the three-year budget.

After table discussions, members of Executive Council rose to offer feedback on the draft plan. Some said they agreed that the church should not change its assessment rate, and they spoke in favor of a separate decision not to ask Episcopal Relief & Development to begin contributing to the churchwide budget in exchange for the services it receives from church departments. Others suggested the draft budget plan doesn’t fully fund some of the church’s priorities, including creation care and youth and young adult ministries.

One sharp point of contention was the Joint Budget Committee’s decision not to increase the amount of money the church draws annually from the returns on its $167 million unrestricted investment portfolio. Joe McDaniel, an Executive Council member from the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast who is not a member of the Joint Budget Committee, has proposed raising the investment draw to provide more money in the budget to support the church’s mission and ministry priorities.

McDaniel’s resolution is due for an evening discussion on Jan. 26 by Executive Council’s Finance Committee, though during a break earlier in the day, he specified to Episcopal News Service that he proposes increasing the draw to 5.42%, which he said would add $3 million over three years to the budget. This would be “a prudent course of action” to increase funding to the Office of African Descent Ministries, set aside money for General Convention resolutions and support ministries favored by the next presiding bishop, who will be elected in June and installed in November.

McDaniel read a statement further detailing his proposal during Executive Council’s afternoon budget discussion. “Are we a church that is more focused on the size of our endowment,” he said, “or are we a church focused on doing actual mission work?”

It isn’t clear whether McDaniel’s proposal can garner the support of a majority of Executive Council, and some members have expressed skepticism. Diane Pollard, a member from the Diocese of New York, spoke during the morning plenary of “the wisdom of being careful” by maintaining the church’s more conservative approach to its investments. “I think that what we do today affects people many, many years after.”

The church in recent budgetary cycles has settled on a 5% draw from its investments, which is applied to a rolling five-year average of investment returns. Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes, who also serves as the church’s treasurer, said Jan. 26 in his report to Executive Council that the church is likely to end 2023 with a strong 16% return on its investments, though he cautioned members to look beyond single-year figures.

“Past performance is not indicative of future returns. That’s always the warning,” Barnes said, citing the common truism in financial planning. The church’s five-year average of annual net returns is closer to 8.5%, he said, and that, with inflation and other costs, typically leaves about 5% to support the churchwide budget through the investment draw.

Executive Council’s first day also featured a presentation by leaders of the Church Pension Group, who have been meeting with members of Executive Council and other church leaders to discuss renewal of a memorandum of understanding. Church Pension Group is incorporated separately from the church to manage a wide range of clergy and lay benefits for its employees.

General Convention elects 24 trustees of Church Pension Group’s board, with 12 of those seats up for election this June in Louisville. (The 25th trustee, the president, is elected by the other 24.) Kathryn McCormick, the board’s chair, asked for Executive Council to help encourage a diverse slate of candidates who have the financial expertise the board needs to be effective.

Mary Kate Wold, Church Pension Group’s chief executive officer and president, provided a brief history of the agency, founded in 1917, and she underscored its continued commitment to ensuring support for church employees, both now and in retirement.

“We are very intent that we can honor the promises made over decades,” Wold said. In some cases, that means planning for pension payments more than 70 years in the future. “That’s a long, long span of responsibility, and we take that very seriously.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

Anglican, Catholic bishops attending ecumenical summit prepare to travel to Canterbury

Episcopal News Service - sex, 26/01/2024 - 14:15

[Anglican Communion News Service] This week’s “Growing Together” summit has seen pairs of Anglican and Catholic bishops gather for a series of ecumenical discussions and visits to holy sites in Rome, that have significance to the common roots shared by both traditions. 

Today, before the summit moves to Canterbury for the second phase of the program, the bishops gathered to pray at the Church of San Gregorio al Celio during their last day in Rome. It was a fitting location, as San Gregorio al Celio is the church from where St. Augustine was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great in 597, to be the first archbishop of Canterbury.

Read the entire article here.

Seven Weeks for Water 2024 will focus on ‘leveraging water for peace’

Episcopal News Service - sex, 26/01/2024 - 12:15

[World Council of Churches] The World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Water Network is launching its annual “Seven Weeks for Water” Lenten campaign, beginning on Feb. 14, with a prayer service.

This year’s campaign will focus on the theme “Leveraging water for peace,” also the theme of World Water Day on March 22 . During Lent, various activities around Seven Weeks for Water will take place online and in person.  

Short reflections and resources on water and peace-related issues written by several prominent theologians and church leaders from around the world will be available in different languages online, and distributed via WCC platforms for member churches and all people of good will.

Read the entire article here.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity offers churches an opportunity to share the ‘gifts of differences’

Episcopal News Service - qui, 25/01/2024 - 16:34

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby speaks during a service of evening prayer in Rome on Jan. 25 during which he and Pope Francis commissioned a group of 50 Anglican and Catholic bishops to go out into the world to be witnesses of Christian unity. Photo: Screenshot, Vatican Media YouTube

[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. Margaret Rose, ecumenical and interreligious deputy to the Presiding Bishop, has been busy the past eight days, as she has participated in several observances of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The week, which began on Jan. 18 with the Feast Day of St. Peter, ends on Jan. 25, the Feast Day of St. Paul.

On Jan. 24, she attended a service at the Interchurch Center in New York, and she said the sermon preached by the Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, described the value of Christians coming together during this annual observance.

“We, as Christians, are more divided than ever,” Rose told Episcopal News Service, but those divisions don’t center on doctrine, she said, because those types of disputes don’t seem to occupy Christians much these days. Instead, “the fissures today are that we are divided by race, by class, by political ideology. So, this week is about sharing the gifts of difference.”

Across the country and the globe, a variety of services involving Episcopalians and Anglicans marked this year’s observance.

On Jan. 25, at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, and the Most Rev. Ian Ernest, director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, were part of an ecumenical evening prayer service at which Pope Francis officiated. During the service the pope and Welby commissioned a group of 50 Anglican and Catholic bishops to go out into the world to be witnesses of Christian unity. Two women were among the Anglican bishops.

Pope Francis greets an Anglican bishop (right) and a Roman Catholic bishop after they and 48 other bishops had been commissioned during a Jan. 25 service in Rome. Photo: Screenshot, Vatican Media YouTube

During the commissioning, Pope Francis addressed the bishops, saying, “Brothers and sisters, 14 centuries ago, Pope Gregory the Great commissioned St. Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, and his companions, to set out from Rome to preach the joy of the gospel to the peoples of England. Today, with gratitude to God for our sharing in the gospel, we send you forth, beloved co-workers for the kingdom of God, so that wherever you carry out your ministry, you may together bear witness to the hope that does not deceive and the unity for which our Savior prayed.”

Welby said during the commissioning, “Brothers and sisters, God reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. As we send you forth from the tomb of the apostle to the nations, we call on you to make this ministry your special care. As you preach and celebrate the sacraments with God’s holy people, bear witness to the one hope of your calling. May your ministry alongside one another as Catholics and Anglicans be for the world a foretaste of the reconciling of all Christians in the unity of the one and only church of Christ for which we pray this day.”

The two then together invoked God’s blessing on the pairs of bishops, using words from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

The bishops were part of the “Growing Together” summit that paired bishops from the Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions for discussion and pilgrimages in Rome and Canterbury. Its aim was “to strengthen bonds of friendship and commitment between Anglicans and Catholics for joint witness and mission in a fragmented world.”

At the Anglican Centre in Rome on Jan. 23, Ernest celebrated the Holy Eucharist, and the preacher was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state. In his sermon, Parolin said that while it is good for Christians to gather this week, “We must acknowledge, however, that our joy at being together and worshipping together is also tinged with sadness, since we have not yet reached the stage where Catholics and Anglicans can share fully at the Lord’s table.” But, he added, “instead of discouraging us, may that sadness urge us on, to work and pray with ever greater commitment for the coming of that day when we will at last be one at the altar.”

On Jan. 24 at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Munich, Germany, the Rt. Rev. Mark Edington, bishop of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, read one of the lessons at an ecumenical service that also included representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and the Romanian Orthodox Church.

In New Orleans, Christ Church Cathedral was the host on Jan. 22 for the annual areawide Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service, at which Louisiana Bishop Shannon Duckworth was the preacher. She was joined by the local bishops of the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta hosted a service of Evensong on Jan. 21. The cathedral’s curate for ecumenical and interreligious relations, the Rev. Salmoon Bashir, preached the sermon.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was started in 1908 by Episcopalians with the specific goal of reuniting with the Roman Catholic Church. It has since become an annual ecumenical observance sponsored by the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

This year’s theme comes from Luke 10:27 – “You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself” – which leads into Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan.

–Melodie Woerman is a freelance writer and former director of communications for the Diocese of Kansas.

Clinton Foundation brings Los Angeles area faith leaders together for yearlong conversation

Episcopal News Service - qui, 25/01/2024 - 11:52

[Diocese of Los Angeles] Los Angeles Bishop John Harvey Taylor is among two dozen Los Angeles-area interfaith and ecumenical leaders participating in a yearlong William J. Clinton Foundation program, meeting monthly at St. Paul’s Commons, designed to equip faith communities to understand, teach about and treat addiction.

The program on Jan. 19 was provided by Stuart C. Nelson, president and CEO of the Institute for Spirituality and Health in Houston, who oversaw a lively conversation about the teachings in various traditions about the relationship between faith and health.

‘A Case for Love’ screening draws praise, commitment from Episcopalians

Episcopal News Service - qui, 25/01/2024 - 11:46

The teachings of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry were the inspiration for “A Case for Love,” a feature-film documentary that was screened in theaters across the United States on Jan. 23. Curry, shown here in a screenshot from the movie’s trailer, also appears in the film.

[Diocese of Los Angeles] Unselfish love is an antidote for the divisions ailing society, said some Episcopalians from the Diocese of Los Angeles after attending the one-day Jan. 23 screening of “A Case for Love,” a feature-film documentary inspired by the teachings of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

“Yes, saying yes and choosing to be kind makes you kinder all the time,” said Serena Beeks, retired executive director of the diocesan Commission on Schools, in a telephone interview from New York City, where she viewed the film.

“If you can bring one person along every now and then, it helps. But it’s one person at a time. That is how movements start, but it’s not fast, certainly not at the beginning, so we have to persevere,” added Beeks. “What’s the alternative? We can be selfish. But let’s not. That’s not much fun. Let’s give it a shot.”

“’A Case For Love’ poses an explicit, scary question – has love lost the battle? – and answers with a resounding no, especially when it comes to those living everyday lives, caring for those around them or receiving self-sacrificial love,” said Los Angeles Bishop John Harvey Taylor, who attended the evening screening at the Santa Anita Mall in Arcadia. “We all see the love in those families, and indeed in our families. It comes naturally. Bishop Curry’s prophetic call is to understand at last that the health of our culture and politics, even our survival as a nation, depend on finding a new civic vocabulary rooted in love and our obligation to our neighbor. This wonderful film deepens my belief that if this shift is to occur, the Episcopal Church will be in the lead.”

Produced by Grace-Based Films, a company formed by parishioners of All Saints Church in Beverly Hills, “A Case for Love” included interviews with “ordinary people doing ordinary to extraordinary things,” director Brian Ide says in the introductory moments of the film. “We wove those stories into seven chapters with universal themes; stories like answering the call, or exclusion, or being dealt a difficult hand in life, or love and loss – themes that many of us can resonate with.

“We also interviewed over 200 people that were just ‘man on the street’ interviews where we pulled over on the side of the road in downtown Cincinnati or Minneapolis or Nashville, the Brooklyn Bridge, small farms in Pennsylvania, and we asked people what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words ‘unselfish love?’”

Also featured were prominent politicians like U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and South Carolina U.S. Representative James Clyburn; notable clergy, including Curry, as well as the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian of the Washington National Cathedral and interim president of Episcopal Divinity School; and those in the arts and letters, such as actor Sam Waterston, NBC weathercaster Al Roker and historian Jon Meacham.

“There’s that Hallmark card kind of love,” Roker says to Curry in an introductory segment. “But this is the kind of love that takes work. That takes digging in and sometimes getting uncomfortable with that because anything worthwhile is going to be hard work.”

Near the end of the film, Curry said, “I was raised to believe that we’ve been put on this earth to make it better … to continue God’s work of creation, of creating a world that we can all say this is good.

“We didn’t get here overnight and we’re not going beyond here to a new day that reflects our deepest dreams overnight either,” he said, but added that each person can get involved. “I used to tell folk when I was a parish priest, we can’t do everything, but we can do something, so let’s do the something that is the most good we can do. We’re not God. We’re who we are. I’m Michael. What is the greatest good that Michael can bring and do? Maybe that’s enough to make it, one step at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time, one life at a time.”

The film explores such topics as racial justice, sexual identity, military service, foster care, politics, sexual trafficking, disability, loss of loved ones, refugees, volunteering, food justice and more.

“It begins here, what I try to live by; don’t withhold from another that which you would not want withheld from yourself,” Brown Douglas said. “If you want respect, don’t withhold it from another. Do you want to feel safe, anytime you were out of your home and on the streets, then don’t withhold that. Do you want enough food to eat, a decent home, equal opportunities, then don’t withhold these things – decent health care – from one another.”

Suzanne Edwards-Acton, chair of the diocesan Program Group on Black Ministries, contacted after the screening, agreed that unselfish love can be the antidote to society’s ills, “but we can’t mandate unselfish love, and our society is full of selfish people.”

Rather, she said, required truth-telling about the nation’s history and laws; “that’s the antidote, because we can’t be trusted to center unselfish love. Our propensity for greed and selfishness is real and the most loving thing we can do is tell the truth about that propensity and center everything around that truth.”

While truth telling and confession are necessary, Curry said in the film in response to an interview question about the church acknowledging the pain it has caused, they don’t go far enough.

“Confessing isn’t enough. You’ve got to do something. You learn from that path. You turn and then you work together to build a new future where, as ex slaves used to say there’s plenty good room for all God’s children. That’s the Christian religion I’m about.”

A call to action: intentional love

At the end of the film Bishop Curry issues a call to action, asking viewers to participate in 30 days of intentional love and record them in a journal that may be downloaded from the movie’s website. “Acts create habits and habits create change and the world desperately needs change,” said Ide, the film’s director.

Free resources, including discussion guides for adult education and youth groups, communications tools, social media files and posters, can be downloaded at the same website.

The Rev. Guy Leemhuis, vicar of St. Luke’s of the Mountains Church in La Crescenta, said members have been so inspired by the movie that “we’ve started calling ourselves the Love Church so that others know in doing so, we can live into that incarnational reality,” he said. They’re excited about the streaming opportunity and study guide to follow, he said.

“We are definitely going to try to implement the 30 days of unselfish love acts,” he added. “I am absolutely convinced unselfish love is the key to transform our society from one of intolerance and scapegoating our fellow neighbors to realizing God’s dream that we love one another. Love conquers all. Let’s be in it to win it.”

“Jesus is love, so it helps us to let all in our community know we are a place of love and welcome to all. Jesus beckons us to demonstrate this unselfish love in the world. I’m excited, as I think will be anyone who has an opportunity to watch and internalize the message of love.”

In San Gabriel, where Church of Our Saviour members had already committed to the film’s call to action, the Rev. Jeff Thornberg, rector, said members were moved to tears with “the anecdotal stories of love in action set next to Bishop Curry’s inspired theology.

“Going into the movie, a few were wondering whether a general appreciation for ‘love’ as an antidote to the problems of the world was a simplistic solution, but felt that the movie portrayed a transformational depth of theology, but more than that, theology in action.”

He added, “The decision to love, and more specifically act in loving ways that center not on self but on the other is, and perhaps has always been, the antidote to the inherent brokenness of the human condition that leads to the systemic division and brokenness of our world.”

For Gretchen Malcolm, a parishioner at St. Margaret’s Church in San Juan Capistrano, while some of the personal stories of hardship and loss were difficult to watch, the film “teaches us that love can be shown in the smallest ways, by doing kind things. Love will transform everyone, no matter what they’re going through.”

The Rev. Melissa Campbell Langdell, rector of All Saints Church in Oxnard, wanted to hear more about “when love becomes costly, how do we keep loving? It was a good conversation starter and I hope we can all build on its message and share how our communities and individuals are acting with unselfish love.”

Kay Alexander, a parishioner at St. Mark’s Church in Upland, said the movie’s important message needs to be shared even more widely. “The diversity of the people interviewed stood out to me,” she said. “I probably won’t journal but will try to remember daily to spread love.”

Hailey Johnson, 16, whose family attends St. Mark’s, said she especially liked the part about an older couple who adopted three girls from Korea. The father admitted to having been raised in a “somewhat racist” household, but he actively shed those beliefs to welcome the children into his life. That, Hailey said, was unselfish love.

The Rev. Julie Morris, pastor of Mount Cross Lutheran Church in Camarillo, said she viewed the film with 10 people from her church and was inspired by the variety of stories they documented.

“I’m convinced that noticing and telling the stories of unselfish love we witness and participate in is a needed antidote for despair,” she said. “The film reminds us that we can all start where we are to practice unselfish love. Like Bishop Curry said, ‘We’re here to make the world a better place.’”

“I found a couple of the stories particularly moving – the woman whose life was completely changed after having been sex-trafficked as a child, and the family who helped the pregnant immigrant woman and her children,” said Becky Riley, also of Mount Cross Church. “The message that came through, I believe, was simple – be kind and caring at every opportunity. Don’t worry that you can’t do it all, just do what you can every day. Also, it felt hopeful, which is not a feeling that one gets from the news.”

While encouraged by the film’s message of love, Cynthia Kartman, a member of St. Clement by-the-Sea Church in San Clemente, expressed mixed feelings about the film. “Evangelism makes me very uncomfortable. There are so many people who are using their version of Christ to push people away from the church and from Christ.”

Susan Stewart, a member of St. George’s Church in Laguna Hills, said the film did not address “what do you do when it’s very hard to love somebody and how to maintain a loving relationship when someone is unloving.”

The Rev. Susan Russell said that she will add links to the film’s discussion guide to the web page for the diocese’s Engagement Across Difference initiative, which she leads. They also will create a small-group Lenten study curriculum for use by groups and congregations.

“There is no better antidote to the anxiety, polarization and division that dominates our civic discourse than coming together to share the inspiring witness of those making a case for love in the face of hate,” said Russell, “a case for peace in a time of war, a case for hope in the wake of despair. And there is no better time to come together than during Lent.”

Anglican, Catholic bishops visit St. Peter’s Basilica as part of ecumenical summit

Episcopal News Service - qua, 24/01/2024 - 15:46

[Anglican Communion News Service] Pairs of Anglican and Catholic bishops from across the world made a pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Basilica on Jan. 23 as part of a weeklong ecumenical summit called Growing Together, run by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission. It aims to strengthen bonds of friendship between Anglicans and Roman Catholics as they explore their joint witness and mission.

Set within the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the bishops participated in Anglican Choral Evensong in the Choir Chapel of St. Peter’s. Traditional Anglican Evensong was celebrated previously in St. Peter’s in 2017.

As one of the most important Christian places of pilgrimage, St Peter’s is believed to have been built over the burial site of the apostle Peter, the head of the 12 apostles of Jesus and, according to tradition, the first bishop of Antioch and later the first bishop of Rome, thus the first pope.

The service was sung by a specially assembled choir drawn from the two Anglican churches in Rome, All Saints (Church of England) and St. Paul’s within the Walls (Episcopal Church). The Rev. Robert Warren, chaplain of All Saints’ Anglican Church in Rome, officiated.

Read the entire article here.

Episcopal recipients of $6 million in Lilly grants focus on lay leadership, community engagement, digital growth

Episcopal News Service - qua, 24/01/2024 - 14:31

St. James’ Episcopal Church in Independence, Iowa, regularly organizes free Hot Dog Fridays. The community meals exemplify the kinds of local outreach that the Diocese of Iowa hopes to build on with its Regional Mission Initiative. Photo: Elizabeth Duff Poppelwell

[Episcopal News Service] Four Episcopal dioceses and one Episcopal parish are launching new initiatives focused on congregational vitality and leadership development after being awarded a combined $6 million in the latest round of grants from the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative.

The Episcopal grants were awarded to the dioceses of Albany, Iowa, Spokane and Vermont, and Christ Episcopal Church in Denver, Colorado. Each of the individual grants totaled more than $1 million, to be used over the next three to five years to develop, test and assess their new programs.

Overall, Lilly awarded grants to 104 faith-based recipients “to help congregations flourish by strengthening ministries that lead their congregations to deeper relationships with God, enhance their connections with each other and contribute to the vitality of their communities and the world.”

In Vermont, the Episcopal diocese plans to use its grant to establish an initiative called Communities for Spiritual Vitality, focused largely on training lay members to take on greater leadership roles in small, rural congregations. The diocese is partnering with the neighboring Diocese of Massachusetts.

Vermont Bishop Shannon MacVean-Brown, in an interview with Episcopal News Service, noted that 18 of her diocese’s 42 congregations are in the middle of clergy leadership transitions, which already requires lay leaders to do more. Communities for Spiritual Vitality will organize groups of lay leaders from the two dioceses into cohorts that will follow a two-year curriculum mixing in-person gatherings with clergy-led training in formation and discipleship practices.

“Part of what I hope people will gain from this is knowing that they’re not alone in it,” MacVean-Brown said. “There are other people engaged in this work. There are other people trying to figure out, how are we going to be church in this time that is so different from what we understood?”

The Diocese of Albany, based in New York’s capital city, extends north to the Canadian border. It will use its Lilly grant to help establish the Albany Blooms Thriving Parish Initiative. Like Vermont, the Diocese of Albany plans to develop local leaders partly through online workshops and in-person retreats.

“We will be better equipped to support the good work our parishes are already doing throughout the 19 counties of New York which make up our diocese,” the Rev. Meaghan Keegan, Albany’s director of administration, said in a news release.

“We will grow together by addressing the spiritual health of our congregations, by learning how to identify and overcome challenges and by reaching out in our communities united with the common mission of sharing the Gospel of Jesus.”

The Diocese of Spokane, which includes the eastern half of Washington and northern Idaho, is launching Building Bridges, Healing Divides with its grant from the Lilly Endowment. It aims to create “a culture of listening, learning, and development” among the diocese’s congregations, “particularly among individuals and groups who differ from one another in meaningful ways,” according to a diocesan news release.

And in the Diocese of Iowa, the grant money is being used to establish the Regional Mission Initiative. The diocese will hire three regional missioners to work with its congregations, meeting regularly with clergy and lay leaders for training and support as they reimagine their churches’ roles in the state’s shrinking rural communities.

The survival of those churches is intertwined with the survival of their towns, the Rev. Meg Wagner, the diocese’s canon to the ordinary, told ENS. The Regional Mission Initiative will encourage congregational leaders to deeply engage with the rapidly changing needs of their communities.

For example, “could our churches offer places where, by hosting things like farmers markets or arts events or concerts, it promotes that kind of cohesion in a community,” said Wagner, who serves as the Iowa initiative’s project director. “We believe this is where God is calling us.”

This is the second round of grants in the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative. Four Episcopal recipients participated in the first round, awarded in 2020, to support their innovative approaches to congregational revitalization.

In this new round, the grant awarded to Christ Episcopal Church in Denver will support expansion of its online community and ministries, which formed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The congregation calls its initiative the Narthex, after the space within a church just outside the nave where parishioners pass through and congregate before services – “a place of encounter between worship and the world.”

Christ Church is now developing a pilot group of six affiliated Narthex congregations, with plans to grow into a larger peer-mentoring network, all focused on equipping the leaders of online faith communities with the technology and skills they need for digital evangelism and ministries.

“We need parishes to be incubators of innovation amid the myriad social and cultural changes we are currently navigating,” Colorado Bishop Kym Lucas said in a diocesan news release. “Leadership comes in many forms, but I firmly believe new initiatives are most effective when they originate at the grassroots level. I am delighted not just for Christ Church Denver, but the wider diocese, denomination and beyond.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

Diocese of Florida Episcopalians, in written feedback, lament ‘culture of acrimony and distrust’ in diocese

Episcopal News Service - ter, 23/01/2024 - 14:37

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Florida Standing Committee released a consultant’s summary of her listening sessions and dozens of letters she received last year from Episcopalians in the diocese, underscoring the deep divisions that diocesan leaders hope to begin mending at a convocation set for Jan. 27.

The four-page summary was drafted by the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves, who is trained in conflict mediation and was retained as a consultant by the Diocese of Florida as it navigates a tumultuous leadership transition. Gray-Reeves, the former bishop of the Diocese of El Camino Real, now serves as managing director of the College for Bishops.

Florida Bishop John Howard, who retired on Oct. 31 after 20 years with the diocese, had been accused of a pattern of discrimination toward LGBTQ+ clergy and their supporters. Tensions over his leadership flared publicly after the diocese tried twice in 2022 to elect a bishop to succeed him. Both elections were successfully blocked by objections filed by some Florida clergy and lay leaders, leaving Florida unable to consecrate a new bishop.

In the interim, retired Georgia Bishop Scott Benhase is serving Florida as a part-time assisting bishop, with help from retired New Jersey Bishop Chip Stokes. The standing committee serves as the diocese’s ecclesiastical authority during the diocesan bishop vacancy. The Jacksonville-based Diocese of Florida is one of five Episcopal dioceses in the state.

Gray-Reeves, in addition to meeting last year with key groups in the diocese, invited Episcopalians to share their thoughts and feelings on the state of the diocese in confidential letters. Gray-Reeves’ summary, dated Dec. 30 and released Jan. 22, indicates she received 71 responses.

“Most letters expressed concern for the overall health and well-being of the diocese, offering prayers and sincere hope for its recovery,” she said. “There was concern that the level of conflict, the general culture of acrimony and distrust, were significant barriers to a productive future.”

Many letters raised administrative concerns, Gray-Reeves said. “Among these letters were concerns about Bishop Howard’s impact as a leader,” as well as Howard’s former canon to the ordinary, the Rev. Allison DeFoor. Some encounters with Howard and DeFoor were described as “disrespectful to the individual or congregations, biased or inconsistent with canons or diocesan parties.”

Some letters also identified perceived bias and exclusion relating to LGBTQ+ persons, as well as women and people of color.

“A few letters reflected upset and disappointment in the outcome of the [bishop] election process,” Gray-Reeves continued, both from those who thought the winner of the elections, the Rev. Charlie Holt, should have been consecrated and those who objected to his election.

“The level of conflict is obviously very high in the Diocese of Florida,” she said. “The climate of the diocese is one currently governed by conflict generally, characterized by deep mistrust, fear, hurt, isolation and lowered functioning, productivity and innovation. What was expressed in the letters typifies, I believe, a psychologically unsafe environment.”

The Diocese of Florida holds its convention Nov. 11 at the Episcopal School of Jacksonville, as seen on video of the proceedings.

Gray-Reeves plans to attend the Jan. 27 convocation at the diocese’s Camp Weed, which was scheduled by the standing committee as part of the ongoing healing process in the diocese. This is intended as the first of three such convocations, with attendance expected by all clergy in the diocese and at least two lay leaders from each congregation.

“These will offer a safe space for diocesan members to engage in processes that will lead to reconciliation between groups and individual members of the diocese, the wider diocese and The Episcopal Church,” the convocation steering committee says in its online invitation. “The longer-term objective of the convocations and the homework built into the process is to cultivate tools for reconciliation and healing that will ultimately become part of the cultural pattern in the life of the diocese.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

Retired Episcopal priest, ‘Gilded Age’ actor Jack Gilpin reflects on his life in theater, on screen and the church

Episcopal News Service - ter, 23/01/2024 - 14:26

Retired Episcopal priest the Rev. Jack Gilpin stars as Mr. Church, the butler for a wealthy New York family in the 1880s, in the HBO Max series “The Gilded Age.” Photo: HBO video screenshot

[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. John Gilpin, who goes by “Jack,” is like many other priests in The Episcopal Church. He found a calling to ordained ministry later in life – he was 61 when ordained a priest in 2012 – and as a bivocational priest, he continued the job he had before ordination.

But one thing that makes Gilpin unique is that job. He is a professional actor, having starred on Broadway and in regional theater, as well as in numerous movies and television series, including recurring roles in “Kate and Allie,” “Law and Order” and “Billions.”

He currently can be seen in the HBO Max series “The Gilded Age” as Mr. Church, the butler for one of the featured New York families in the 1880s. The character’s name, he assured Episcopal News Service, was established before he landed the part.

Gilpin grew up in northern Virginia before attending boarding school and eventually Harvard, where he graduated in 1973. In 1985 he married Ann McDonough, who also is an actor, and they have three children. One of them, Betty Gilpin, is an Emmy-nominated actor. Jack Gilpin grew up in The Episcopal Church but wasn’t active as a young adult, returning after he had begun his career.

After his ordination to the priesthood in December 2012, he began serving St. John’s in New Milford, Connecticut, first as priest-in-charge and then as rector. He retired in September 2020 and then served as a member of the Bishop Transition Committee that resulted in the election of the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey Mello as the diocese’s 16th bishop on May 21, 2022.

Gilpin spoke with ENS by phone on Jan. 15 about his faith, his call to ordained ministry and his work as an actor. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ENS: I’ve heard you describe how you grew up in The Episcopal Church, then fell away and started attending church again. Can you say more about the impetus for that?

Gilpin: When I was confirmed in 1963, when I was 12, my godmother gave me a copy of the King James Version of the Bible with the words of Jesus in red. And I still have it, and the covers are long since worn off. When I went away to boarding school and then to college, I had my Bible with me. Even though I was not in the church at all, when I felt off about something, if I was anxious or angry or fearful or just unsettled in a deep way, I would open it up and look for some red words. I wasn’t looking for a specific passage. And those red words would always calm me down, because they came from a place of peace and calm and authority.

In 1982, I was working in a summer theater in Milford, New Hampshire. I brought along with me a copy of “The Sickness unto Death” by Kierkegaard – it was a book that I’d been assigned in high school and never read – and it’s about anxiety. He took as his text the lilies of the field from Matthew – they toil not, neither do they spin – and it just hit home with me.

The place where they had actors living in this little town was right across the road from the Congregational church, and there was nothing else to do on Sunday mornings but go to church, so I went every Sunday I was there. The pastor was a very nice, good guy. The preaching was simple, expository. And – you remember the old days when you had a camera and there was a focus on it, and there was that moment when everything just came into focus? That was what it was like for me. I left church to walk into town to get coffee and a doughnut, and all of a sudden, I realized I was skipping, and people were looking at me, and I thought, wait a minute.

When I got back to New York, I walked into a beautiful church in Greenwich Village called Grace Church. It’s an old, neo-Gothic, beautiful piece of architecture by the same architect who did St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. I went about once a month for three or four months, and within six months I was going every Sunday, because it convinced me that I could be myself. I could call myself a Christian and still be myself. In fact, that’s the point.

The Rev. Jack Gilpin preaches a sermon at Trinity Church, Southport, Connecticut, on Sept. 23, 2023. Photo: Trinity YouTube video

ENS: Can you say more about what led you to be ordained?

Gilpin: After going to church there regularly, in 1989 I decided to audit a couple of classes at Union Theological Seminary. After that, I decided I’d get a Master of Divinity degree just for the heck of it. It took me seven years, but I finished in 1997, two years after we’d moved up to Roxbury, Connecticut. We’d started to attend Christ Church here, and I became a licensed lay preacher, preaching a couple of times a year. After our kids were out of the house, I had preached a sermon, and a woman in the congregation wrote me a note that said, when are you going to do something about this, because you have a call. I thought, well, OK, and I just started putting one foot in front of the other.

ENS: Do you find any similarities in being a priest and being an actor?

Gilpin: There are definitely similarities between the work of a clergyperson and theater, especially theater. You’ve got a script, and it has a beginning, a middle and an end. You’re with a group of people. You’re all doing it together. You have most of the lines, but you’re all doing it together. And it’s different every time.

I retired from parish ministry for family reasons, and I do miss doing the liturgy on a regular basis with that group of people. The great blessing to me of parish ministry is that you’re invited into the lives of people, their highest highs and their lowest lows, and trusted with their companionship on their way.

ENS: When did you know that you wanted to be an actor?

Gilpin: My first theater experience that I remember was when I played the Easter Bunny in a church pageant. I was like 6 years old. I remember looking out at the audience, they were applauding, and I was thinking, this is pretty cool. And it wasn’t the applause – there was a kind of communication going on in that room that involved everybody, and age made no difference. We were in a different dimension in that theater space. And I found that feeling replicated all through grade school, high school and college when I was acting in a play.

I went to college with the idea that I was going to become a lawyer, but when I was a sophomore, I thought, no, I’m going to be doing this [acting]. I was doing two or three plays a year, and I’d spend 30 hours a week at the theater, far more than I spent on academics. I graduated in 1973 and came to New York and just started.

ENS: You initially had some roles on soap operas, but you also were in Broadway shows.

Gilpin: I understudied a play in 1978 called “Players” that lasted for just about two weeks. Then I understudied the play called “Lunch Hour” with Sam Waterston and Gilda Radner, and Mike Nichols directed. That was 1980, and I understudied Sam and two other actors, and I played all three of those roles on Broadway. But the first time where I was in the cast was a play called “Beyond Therapy” by Christopher Durang in 1982.

ENS: So, you started in theater, and movies and television came alongside that?

Gilpin: Yes, I did some soaps, and the first TV movie I did was “Max and Sam” [later renamed “Found Money”] with Dick Van Dyke and Sid Caesar. That was a lot of fun. The first feature I did was a movie called “Compromising Positions” with Frank Perry in 1984.

ENS: Do you have a favorite role in your long career as an actor?

Gilpin: First, “Beyond Therapy,” because that was a big break for me in terms of putting me in a different category in the eyes of the business. I did it off-Broadway with Sigourney Weaver and Steve Collins, and then on Broadway with John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest. I was one of the two holdovers from the off-Broadway company that went on Broadway, and that was a lot of fun.

Then in 1985 I did a play called “The Foreigner,” a comedy that was very successful off-Broadway and ran for about a year and a half. I replaced the guy who had done the lead originally and came in and did it for seven months. That was just a great part.

But one of my favorites has always been when I was involved for many years with an off-off-Broadway company called the Ensemble Studio Theatre, which has been in existence now for over 50 years. I did a play that was only nine performances by Romulus Linney, the father of actor Laura Linney, about Oscar Wilde called “Goodbye Oscar,” and I played Oscar Wilde. So, there are those three, but I would have to say, playing Oscar Wilde was probably my favorite.

ENS: Can you say a bit about how you got your current role of Mr. Church on “The Gilded Age”?

Gilpin: In October 2019, I decided I’d be retiring from the parish for family reasons, and I announced that to the congregation after Easter 2020. Well, that same week in October, I got a call to come in for “The Gilded Age.” I had turned down auditions for regular parts on series the previous eight years, because I knew I wouldn’t have the time to do that. This was supposed to start in March of the next year, and I thought, well, maybe I can swing it. Michael Engler, the director, who I had known from theater years before, told me he saw the [audition] tape and thought, “That’s what I want.” Normally, especially on a project of this size, you go through echelons of people, and you’re in competition with other actors. I heard from my agent that they were seriously interested in me, and then a month later, I got the job. And I had forgotten that the character’s name was Church.

ENS: What do you like best in your character?

Gilpin: I like the fact that he is a problem solver. I like the fact that he’s like the dad, and I like being a dad. I like helping people work together and knowing that there are certain requirements for that; that you have to do that with respect for each other, and you have to be conscientious about doing your job. I like working with the other people who are at the top, with Celia Keenan-Bolger and Doug Sills. The head housekeeper and the cook are just slightly under the butler, but they are basically the three that run the staff.

I had fantasized when I was in grade school about being a butler, after I read the Jeeves stories by P. G. Wodehouse. It was not about bowing and scraping but about anticipating what people wanted before they knew they wanted it. In the Russell household, I enjoy, as Church, dealing with both Mr. and Mrs. Russell, because they’re different people. They have different areas of the life of the house that they engage in, both of which involve me. And I want their lives to be happy and successful the way they want their lives to be happy and successful.

ENS: With the elaborate sets, I assume you sometimes are filming scenes in the same location but out of sequence, and is that difficult?

Gilpin: It was a real challenge during Covid. We did block shooting, which is when you’d have a set for a number of scenes from different episodes. You do all of those without having done any other scenes that informed those scenes in sequence. There was somebody on the set whose job it was to have all of that in his head. But you’d say, now wait a minute, I don’t remember – has this happened yet or what?

Also, the food is real food. The flowers that you see are fresh flowers. I’ve been in off-Broadway shows that were less expensive than the flower budget for one week of this show. They have spared no expense on details. What you see as the Russell’s kitchen is the actual kitchen in one of the mansions in Newport, the Elms. Last season there were a number of scenes that were shot in the top floor of that house, which is the servants’ quarters. The man who built that house was a Pittsburgh coal baron. I think there were maybe five people in the family, and it had a staff of 60. There was a time when the butler and the head housekeeper came to him to ask for one more hour a week off for the staff, and he fired all 60 of them.

Another thing about the show is that there are a lot of resonances between that period and now, with the deregulation that’s been going on for the last 40 years. That was the period before there was any regulation at all, before the trust busters and yellow journalism, and unions were an issue that comes up in season two. So that’s a dimension of the show that I’ve always thought was interesting.

ENS: When do you start filming the third season of the show?

Gilpin: We learned there was going to be a season three when everyone else did, so I think filming will start in May or June.

–Melodie Woerman is a freelance writer and former director of communications for the Diocese of Kansas.