The Episcopal Church Foundation announced on April 23 that “a transformational legacy gift” from the estate of the late Rev. Dr. J. Robert Wright will permanently fund the Father J. Robert Wright Academic Fellowship, supporting an emerging Episcopal scholar pursuing a doctorate. The first Father Wright Fellow will be announced in June.
“Father Wright is an Episcopal luminary, a celebrated church historian who [was] an integral part of the faculty of General Seminary for decades,” said Yvonne Jones Lembo, director of development for ECF, in a special episode of the foundation’s Profiles in Generosity, which focused on Wright’s gift and legacy. “He also was a 1965 alumnus of the ECF Fellowship Partners Program.”
Speaking as a guest in the episode, Jim Murphy, a former student of Wright’s who now works at Episcopal Relief and Development, recalled how the late scholar and ecumenist was “so proud, quite honestly, to be an ECF Fellow and to be one of the first.”
“Because of that pride in that accomplishment, he wanted to continue that into future,” Murphy said.
“This estate gift to the Episcopal Church Foundation will continue to endow future academic fellows like himself,” Jacob Sierra, senior program director of ECF, told TLC.
The first Father Wright Fellow will be selected from those who applied for a 2025 fellowship (the deadline was in March). The fellow will receive up to $15,000 in the first year, with grants available for two additional years in a lesser amount.
Sierra highlighted that Wright was a fellow when the foundation only worked with those pursuing a Ph.D. in theology. “The program itself has been changed to meet the needs of the changing church,” he said, adding that ECF now offers two fellowship tracks: academic and ministry. The ministry track is for those engaged in ministries at the community or congregational level.
Aside from the general application requirements, nothing else is needed from whoever is selected as the fellowship’s inaugural recipient. Sierra also added that academic fellows generally do not need to be pursuing a doctorate in theology.
“If you’re getting a doctorate in finance but your focus area is directly impacting the world of the church, the life of the church … that’s totally something we would consider supporting,” he said.
Prospective ECF fellows must be members in good standing of their Episcopal parish or any member church of the Anglican Communion. Those applying in the academic track must be enrolled in or planning to enroll in a doctoral research program.
“We’re always looking for fellows whose work aligns with our values of inclusive leadership, expansive community, racial justice, and creation care,” Sierra said.
Today, ECF awards three to four fellowships each year, some academic and some ministry-focused. This is significantly fewer than the six or seven academic fellowships often awarded per year in other periods of the program’s history, which stretches back for more than 40 years. It is unclear if the endowment will increase the number of fellows selected.
As a scholar and teacher, Wright mentored successive generations of clergy, Bishop John Bauerschmidt of the Diocese of Tennessee wrote for The Living Church. “Always ‘Father Wright,’ he was an early supporter of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church: a noteworthy stance at the time from a Catholic Anglican,” Bauerschmidt wrote.
For many years, Wright taught a class on liturgical celebrations, which became a “rite of passage” for many at General Theological Seminary.
World-renowned for his work as an ecumenist, Wright contributed to the creation of the World Council of Churches’ 1982 statement Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, which Bauerschmidt called “one of the most influential ecumenical documents of our time.”
Wright participated in the international dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church and the bilateral dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. He also served as a member of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order for 14 years.
The Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin preached in 2022 that the late scholar’s most significant contribution to the ecumenical movement was his work in Anglican-Lutheran relations, which led to full communion between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2001.
According to theologian Michael Root, the communion would not have been realized without Wright’s “unflagging commitment.”
In 2006, Eerdmans published One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: Studies in Christian Ecclesiality and Ecumenism in Honor of J. Robert Wright, a collection of articles by distinguished historians and ecumenists, edited by Marsha L. Dutton and Patrick Terrell Gray.
“Father Wright’s particular gift to the ecumenical quest has always been his profound sense of the orthodoxy of the early church and his heartfelt loyalty to classic, catholic Anglicanism,” the Very Rev. Andrew C. Mead, rector emeritus of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City, wrote in praise of the book.
In 2008, the well-respected scholar, who served as the St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical History at GTS, received the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Cross of St. Augustine from Archbishop Rowan Williams. The award honored his role as adviser to many bishops and archbishops throughout the Anglican Communion.
Wright died on January 12, 2022, at 85.
Bishop John Bauerschmidt is a former president of the Board of Directors of the Living Church Foundation.
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
