The Task Force to Study Dual-Call Couples has released Dual-Call Couples: Gifts & Challenges for the Church, a 24-minute video that will inform its report to the 79th General Convention.
The Church Pension Group estimated in 2013 that the Episcopal Church is home to approximately 428 dual-call couples and that about 14 percent of active priests are married to other Episcopal clergy.
As part of its work, the Task Force initiated a listening process. “A big part of what we do is getting the wider church talking about dual call — the challenges and the opportunities,” said the Rt. Rev. Douglas Fisher, Bishop of Western Massachusetts and chairman of the task force. “We have not made definitive statements — we have invited dialogue.”
The video features these couples (in order of appearance):
- The Rev. Albert Jennings, rector of St. Timothy’s, Macedonia, Ohio, and the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies
- The Rev. José Reyes, associate rector of All Saints, Worcester, and the Rev. Mary Rosendale, rector of Trinity Church, Ware, Massachusetts
- The Rev. Bennett G. Jones II, rector of Christ Church, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and the Rev. Carolyn G. Jones, associate rector for family ministry
- The Rev. Colin Mathewson and the Rev. Laurel Mathewson, co-vicars of St. Luke’s North Park, San Diego
- The Rev. Elizabeth Farr and the Rev. Matthew Farr, recent graduates of the University of the South’s School of Theology
- The Rev. Courtney Davis-Shoemaker and the Rev. Adam Shoemaker, rector of St. Stephen’s, Charleston, South Carolina, who interviewed while serving in the Diocese of North Carolina
- The Rev. Matthew Johnson, deacon at St. Nicholas, Ridgefield, and the Rev. Jason Lucas, rector of St. Edward the Confessor, Wayzata, Minnesota
Adapted from the Office of Public Affairs
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
