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Sean Rowe’s Relational Jubilee

As a first-time deputy to General Convention, I was grateful to be among so many friends and colleagues who are striving to minister within the Episcopal Church in a way that bears witness to Jesus Christ and his gospel. It was a privilege to serve alongside lay and clergy colleagues from the Diocese of Kentucky, and it was especially fun to be present for the election of Bishop Sean Rowe to the role of Presiding Bishop . Many thanks should be given for the good work completed by the Joint Nominating Committee for the Election of the Presiding Bishop.

I’ll never forget the excitement and energy in the room after Rowe’s election was confirmed by the House of Deputies, and he was welcomed warmly onto the floor by Julia Ayala Harris, the deputies’ president. After his initial comments of thanksgiving, he reflected on his history of growing up in a family, a region, and in industries that absorbed massive changes. Many of them were forced to change or, in the case of businesses, close completely. In some cases, the crisis in his part of the rust belt yielded a resolute desire to change precisely for the sake of preserving and transmitting filial love and friendship, a passion that translated quite naturally into Rowe’s ecclesial laboratory, in which he has led others in an “experiment for the sake of the gospel.” Rowe’s story relates remarkably well to the existential crisis that is manifestly present amid various challenges and changes before us as Episcopalians. Indeed, this, in addition to his manifold talents, likely played no small part in why he was elected on a first ballot — thanks be to God for how the Holy Spirit worked in the House of Bishops. But this same God is “calling us more deeply into the unknown,” Rowe was quick to affirm.

What might this unknown reality look like, and what clues might we take from his words at General Convention?

Rowe’s address to the Convention flagged how it is possible to be both resilient and resistant to the changes that are needed for flourishing and long-term viability. Let the reader understand. He is clear to affirm his bona fides as a Michael Curry Episcopalian who wants to talk about Jesus, and who is grateful for the threefold platform of creation care, evangelism, and racial reconciliation. Rowe already embodies a leadership that is at once born of a commitment to the gospel and open to aligning institutional realities to the needs of the moment (and the future).

However, if we want a roadmap of his vision, then we can look to his remainder of his address to the deputies, in which he outlined three modes of change and renewal: structures, budgets, and relationships. The degree to which this vision is nascent or fully baked in his mind is unclear, but we have reason to believe Rowe is ahead of the curve, and has deeply considered (more than most) the changes that are necessary for our future. He has stared into the abyss of our problems, and has stepped forward as a priest, a bishop, and a leader whose track record indicates he is up to the challenge, by God’s grace. How are we to understand the necessary changes in these three areas, and does Rowe give us any clues?

We must reform our structure and governance so that our essential polity, in which laypeople, clergy, and bishops — all of us together — share authority, does not collapse under its own weight, Rowe said. In other words, Rowe called for fidelity to our polity while urging flexibility within our structures, “leaving room for the Spirit to work among us in this next triennium.” Rowe envisions this as a matter of faithfulness to the gospel of Christ, for as he noted in his homily at the Eucharist, we have an “idolatry of structures and practices that exclude and diminish our witness.” We may expect streamlining of committees and interim bodies, and a stronger commitment to the governing principle of subsidiarity in our church.

It’s time to reorient our churchwide resources — budgets and staff — to support dioceses, congregations on the ground where ministry happens,” Rowe said, “to build on what dioceses and diocesan partnerships already do better than the churchwide structure and use churchwide resources to strengthen those ministries.” Rowe believes it was good that both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops rejected C008 (a call to lower diocesan assessments to 10%), perhaps because more spaciousness is necessary for the conversation to be fruitful. Rowe clearly desires a premeditated plan before such a change is imposed upon the fiscal commitments of our denomination, many of which have significant ethical import. Nevertheless, we can expect to see him trimming the fat of unnecessary expenditures, as we have already seen in capsule form with his service of installation.

We must commit to creating a Beloved Community in which we can disagree without shaming or blaming or tearing each other apart. And here’s an idea: let’s use our anger at injustice instead of turning it inward and our desire to bring about God’s realm to forge a strong and respectful community of leaders. It might be nice if we took one more step toward behaving as if Jesus’ teachings of forgiveness and reconciliation are not just words, but the way we order our lives and our relationships with one another.

This was not a throwaway comment, as Rowe shared a very similar notion in his homily at the closing Eucharist: “And we must learn to have hard conversations with each other, with love and respect, so that we’re all pulling in the same direction: the transformation of the world by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This third programmatic commitment was the most compelling for me to hear, and I believe it is the most foundational of Rowe’s overall vision. We will not reform our structures or our budgets without making significant headway in the reformation of our relationships. We have so far to go in learning to truly listen to one another in our denomination, to say nothing of our political situation in the United States. But imagine, what if our church actually decided to lead the way as an expression of the reconciling love of Christ we are so quick to reference in our gatherings?  Conservatives have often been too reactionary. Liberals have failed at points to truly understand those of a traditional mindset.

There are many kinds of fundamentalists, and they exist across the ideological spectrum. Even — and especially — our labels fail to capture the nuance and complexity that lies at the heart of each person. As Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” The Episcopal Church contains multitudes and contradictions, and I love it. However, our call is for the Church to embody something deeper and more interesting and faithful than the political and organizational cultures around it. Yet, we are all complicit in the sin of division and factionalism, of taking our organizational marching orders from the larger culture, and we desperately need to press the reset button. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

It was refreshing then to hear Rowe elaborate on this third mode of change by calling for a “relational jubilee,” which would cut across so many of our conversations. He said:

I ask you to think of the time between now and November when I take office as a kind of relational jubilee in which we can let go of the resentment, anger, and grudges that have weakened our leadership in this church in these pandemic and post-pandemic years. Too often the way we have behaved toward one another has not been a witness to the power of the Good News of God in Christ, and it has torn relationships and wasted capacity that we need for the work ahead. Sometimes I think we’ve been acting a little like churches that Paul writes about. We all profess the same faith and we are all bound by the same Baptismal Covenant, and I hope that where we are divided, we can find the courage to forgive one another and begin again. Start over for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Rowe is calling for the church to be the church, and for us to refuse to fracture along the same ideological fault lines of surrounding institutions. Even though the Communion Across Difference task force was not renewed, the posture Rowe embodied and the language he used called forth this very idea. If, as one bishop said, “The brand of the Episcopal Church should be Communion Across Difference,” then we have a Presiding Bishop-elect for whom this appears to be a programmatic commitment and a relational way of being.

Many years ago, in another part of our Anglican world, an American news reporter once had the following conversation with Archbishop Michael Ramsey:

Q: Have you said your prayers this morning?

R: Yes.

Q: What did you say in your prayers?

R: I talked to God.

Q: How long did you talk to God?

R: I talked to God for one minute. But it took me 29 minutes to get there.

It has taken us a while to get here. Rowe served on the Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church (otherwise known as TREC), whose recommendations were reported to General Convention in 2015, and largely ignored. In electing Rowe, it seems we are finally ready to have the conversation we set out on having. If it took us a little longer to have it than we expected, let’s simply give thanks for a Presiding Bishop -elect who is ready and well-formed to lead us into this unknown reality. If you are looking for a roadmap for Rowe’s tenure, it appears these three commitments will form it — reform structures, reform budgets, and reform relationships, all for the sake of the gospel. This sounds like good news.

1 COMMENT

  1. My hope is that the failure to continue the Communion Across Difference isn’t an ominous indicator that the Episcopal Church writ large has decided difference, especially when it comes to traditional views on marriage, is not going to be valued going forward. My fear is that is precisely what it means.

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