Episcopal News Service

[Anglican Communion News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally has called the next Primates’ Meeting, to be held Feb. 28-March 5, 2027, in Johannesburg, South Africa. This will be Mullally’s first Primates’ Meeting as archbishop of Canterbury. The last meeting took place in 2024 in Rome, Italy. The Primates’ Meeting is an “Instrument of Communion” that seeks to foster unity and collaboration between Anglican churches worldwide. The meeting provides space for prayer, fellowship and consultation on shared priorities in church and world affairs. Read the full article here.

[Episcopal News Service] The Rt. Rev. Adam James Shoemaker was ordained and consecrated the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Long Island on Sept. 19, making him the first Episcopal bishop of Arab and North African descent in The Episcopal Church’s more than two centuries of history. Nearly 2,000 people attended the service in person at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus in Brookville, New York. As bishop of the Garden City-based diocese, Shoemaker now leads more than 120 congregations across Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties. This next step in his pastoral ministry is also a return home for Shoemaker, who was raised in Huntington. “Returning home to serve as bishop of the diocese that first formed me in faith is an extraordinary gift,” Shoemaker said in a statement ahead of his livestreamed installation. “My own story has taught me to cherish the differences that make us who we are, and in these first months back on Long Island, I have seen again how our diversity is one of this diocese’s greatest strengths.” Shoemaker, 47, was born as Adam James Haggagi in New York, New York, to Jamie Stanforth, an Egyptologist of Jewish descent, and Hamada Haggagi, an Egyptian Muslim. After his parents divorced shortly before his first birthday, Shoemaker lived with his mother and grandparents on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He was baptized at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles near General Theological Seminary, where he would eventually earn a diploma in Anglican Studies. A few years later, Jamie Stanforth married Thomas Shoemaker, and they moved to Long Island. Adam Haggagi’s last name was then legally changed to Shoemaker. Shoemaker’s life experiences as an Egyptian American growing up in one of the most culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse regions in The Episcopal Church have shaped his faith journey to focus on racial justice and reconciliation and embracing diversity in the church. “I think my story has humanized so many of the differences that can sometimes divide – sometimes in tragic ways – and given me a heart for all that diversity,” Shoemaker told Episcopal News Service after he was elected bishop in April. “It’s been a lifelong journey for me to come fully into my sense of self. It’s been a journey of prayer and introspection.” In his note to the Diocese of Long Island, which was published in the installation bulletin, Shoemaker thanked his six half-siblings, who all live in Cairo. Shoemaker was elected bishop on April 18 by nearly 300 clergy and lay delegates gathered at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City. He succeeded the Rt. Rev. Lawrence C. Provenzano, who had served as bishop of the Diocese of Long Island since 2009. Prior to his election, Shoemaker served congregations in North Carolina, South Carolina and Massachusetts. He had also served as a Young Adult Service Corps volunteer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe was chief consecrator at Shoemaker’s installation. Co-consecrators included Provenzano, former Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry, Maine Bishop Thomas J. Brown, Virginia Assistant Bishop Gayle E. Harris, Texas Assistant Bishop Héctor F. Monterroso and the Rev. Katrina D. Foster, bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. South Carolina Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley preached. She and Shoemaker worked together closely when he was rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, one of three historically Black Episcopal churches in Charleston. While at St. Stephen’s, Shoemaker and Woodliff-Stanley also worked closely with the rectors of Charleston’s two other historically Black Episcopal churches to form the Three Churches United. The coalition hosts and participates in events and initiatives as part of the diocese’s commitment to racial justice and reconciliation work. The ordination service’s liturgy featured music and readings in languages reflecting the Diocese of Long Island’s diversity, including Spanish and Mandarin. The liturgy included readings from Isaiah 2:2-4, Ephesians 2:13-22 and Luke 10:1-9. While a student at General Theological Seminary, Shoemaker met his wife, the Rev. Courtney Davis-Shoemaker, priest-in-charge at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Charleston. They have three children: Malcolm, Aubrey and Hannah. Shoemaker additionally holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Duke Divinity School, a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. “I am humbled and grateful to begin this ministry alongside the people of Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk, and hopeful for what God will do among us,” Shoemaker said in his statement.

[Episcopal News Service] A. Gary Shilling, who has influenced preaching in The Episcopal Church for nearly 40 years, announced Sept. 21 that he is retiring as head of the Episcopal Preaching Foundation. Shilling, who founded the organization in 1987, will become board chairman emeritus. Executive Director Peter Wild will continue to lead EPF’s day-to-day operations. “Few people in The Episcopal Church have given more to the enterprise of preaching than Gary Shilling,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe told Episcopal News Service. “For decades, our whole church has benefitted from his passion for forming strong clergy and lay preachers and his willingness to marshal resources in the service of his vision.” Rowe was a seminarian when he participated in the Preaching Excellence Program, the foundation’s centerpiece program. “The training and mentorship I received there has been central to my formation and my ministry in the last 25 years,” he said, adding, “I will always be grateful to Gary and the Episcopal Preaching Foundation for their generous investment in me and thousands of other seminarians and new preachers.” The Very Rev. Randy Hollerith, dean of Washington National Cathedral, said in the foundation’s release that Shilling “has made a unique contribution to the careers of generations of preachers and their Sunday listeners,” including himself. The Rev. Stephen Smith, who has been involved with the foundation since 2005 and now chairs its board, said in an interview that “Gary Schilling changed preaching in the church forever and for the better.” Shilling, an economist, was leading his investment advisory firm in Springfield, New Jersey, when he created, and largely funded, the foundation. He said in the release that his initial motivation was simple. “Too many lousy sermons. What gets people into church – and keeps them there – is the sermon,” he said. “Plus, I simply enjoy hearing a good sermon.” Shilling told ENS that for him one test of a good sermon is “whether you can remember on Wednesday what the preacher said on Sunday.” The sermon, he added, is for most congregants their main continuing point of contact with the church. However, while he believed that strong and vibrant preaching would attract congregants and grow The Episcopal Church, that wasn’t Shilling’s only goal. He hoped that strong preachers would also inspire people in their religious life. “A good sermon changes people in a way that improves their understanding of God and Christianity,” he said in the release. Shilling said the Book of Acts is his favorite book in the Bible because it tells the story of how Paul and others spread “this wonderful concept we call Christianity.” Shilling, 89, who attends Christ Church in Short Hills, New Jersey, decided early on that EPF should work with new preachers as they grew into their ministry. The annual Preaching Excellence Program, the foundation’s centerpiece conference known as PEP, offers seminarians and recent graduates an immersion experience in the art and practice of preaching. Seminarians, homiletics professors and rectors gather for a week of lectures, worship, workshops and small groups in which the students preach sermons for discussion and feedback. The foundation underwrites the cost of registration, travel, and accommodations, except for $375, which the student, their seminary, and their diocese pay in equal parts. Approximately 2,000 clergy have participated in the program since its founding in 1988. The Rev. Elis Hiu-Mei Lui attended Preaching in Excellence in May. She was a transitional deacon when she preached her first sermon to a congregation at St. Mary the Virgin near Times Square in New York City in late August and was ordained a priest on Sept. 12. Lui called PEP “the most retreat-like experience I’ve had in all my years of seminary.” The time she spent in personal prayer was a part of that, she said, adding that the conference also gave her and others “space for you to process and pray about what you’re learning and encountering.” PEP allows participants to “get out of our respective bubbles,” Lui said, and connect with people from other seminaries and local formation programs who will be preaching in different settings. “It was very neat to talk to and connect with peers who are being formed at this exact time, but also with the mentors who’ve been doing this for years.” The preaching foundation expanded its mission over the years with preaching intensives for deacons, including conferences for deacons in the Anglican Church of Canada; a lay preacher program (with help from a $400,000 grant from Trinity Wall Street); an association for Episcopal Church lay preachers; preaching conferences for Spanish-speaking clergy; diocesan preaching conferences; preaching weeks between seminaries’ academic year terms; and Sermon Roundtable to train clergy and lay leadership in giving meaningful sermon feedback (funded by more than $1 million from the Lilly Endowment). It offers Word & Witness, a monthly resource newsletter for preachers. The foundation, with the Seminary of the Southwest, developed the Iona Collaborative, which offers a virtual formation experience for those to be ordained outside a residential seminary. EPF’s Episcopal Lay Preaching Network, founded in 2025, will host the first national conference for lay preachers in October. – The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is a freelance writer who formerly was a senior editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service.

[Episcopal News Service] For more than 50 years, St. Stephen’s & The Vine Episcopal Church in Ferguson, Missouri, has operated a food pantry to help feed its community. As living expenses and the city’s poverty rate increase, more people in north St. Louis County are turning to the ministry, which runs Tuesday and Saturday mornings, for food assistance. Like many other Episcopal-run food pantries nationwide, St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s food pantry began serving more low-income people than usual last year after the federal government made cuts to its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The cuts affected millions of people. The church was already struggling to keep up with the food pantry’s growing demand when this summer it suffered a “financial crisis” after both of its HVAC systems simultaneously broke down and needed to be replaced. In response, St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s part-time transitional priest, the Rev. Teresa Danieley, set up a GoFundMe page in late July to keep its shelves stocked with fresh and nonperishable food and personal care items. “Before the SNAP cuts, we were probably serving around 50 people on a Tuesday morning and more people on a Saturday morning. Now we’re serving at least 75 people each day we’re open,” Danieley told Episcopal News Service. “People can’t make ends meet because they don’t have adequate wages; they don’t have adequate housing; they don’t have adequate health care. Our food pantry is their stopgap.” Danieley noted that the food pantry is the church’s most expensive outreach ministry to operate. St. Stephen’s & the Vine has raised $20,300 through GoFundMe as of Sept. 18. Based on current food costs and not counting additional emergencies, the money raised so far can at best keep the food pantry open for 40 weeks, or about nine months, according to the ministry’s average operational expense of $500 weekly.  As of 2024, 24.2% of Ferguson residents live below the federal poverty level, higher than the national rate of 10.2%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For decades, the city has faced deep-seated housing instability driven by historic racial segregation and discriminatory public policies. “I’ve been in and out of jobs, and it is minimum wage, so even though you get a paycheck, it’s still usually not enough once you pay rent,” Renne Leon, a Ferguson resident who visits St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s food pantry, told KMOV, St. Louis’ CBS affiliate news station, in an August interview. Missouri’s 2026 minimum wage is $15 per hour, which is more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. More people have also been relying on St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s Clay Café for free community meals twice a month. The volunteer-run community meal ministry is open on the third Tuesday morning of the month for brunch and on the third Sunday of the month for dinner. On average, about 40 people are served brunch and 75 people are served dinner monthly. Like the food pantry, the Clay Café runs on donations, costing an average of $250 monthly for brunch and $400 monthly for dinner. The church has ongoing partnerships with nearby churches and organizations, including Episcopal Church of All Saints and Ascension in Northwoods, which operates its own food pantry. And parishioners from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Florissant have donated fresh vegetables harvested from the church’s Good News Giving Garden. “It’s mostly seasonal, of course, but we try to offer fresh produce whenever we can to help supplement people’s meals,” Danieley said. Danieley and church staff have been working to build additional partnerships in and out of Ferguson, including a newly formed food pantry coalition in St. Louis. The church also has been communicating with local Eagle Scout troops to potentially work together to build a bigger storage space for shelf-stable food. “We’re thinking about the long-term sustainability of the food pantry,” Danieley said. Sustaining the food pantry and Clay Café is personal for Danieley, who has a professional background in worker justice advocacy. Before she began serving St. Stephen’s & the Vine, Danieley spent eight years working for the nonprofit Missouri Jobs with Justice.  “We have to make this work,” she said. “We need to keep our doors open for the wider community. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a building sit here all week, only to be used for a few hours on Sunday?” –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at [email protected].

[Episcopal News Service] East Tennessee Bishop Brian Cole and eight other Episcopal clergy in the Knoxville-based diocese signed a letter along with more than 100 interfaith leaders representing Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities in Knox County calling on officials to discontinue the county’s detention agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, and to deny further expansion of ICE operations in the region. “We write together because our traditions, however distinct in practice and belief, rest on a shared moral foundation that to love God and to love our neighbor are not two commandments but one, and that a community which neglects the second has not, in truth, kept the first,” the letter says. About 30 of the letter’s signers gathered for a press conference on Sept. 16 in front of Roger D. Wilson Detention Facility in Knoxville to share personal testimonies about the impact the aggressive tactics used by local and federal enforcement agencies have had on immigrants in the community and their families. As mentioned in the letter, the clergy called for an end to immigrant deportations, especially of those who are legally in the United States. The Rev. RJ Powell, priest-in-charge at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Maryville, prioritizes advocating for immigrants’ rights and volunteered to write the letter on the interfaith leaders’ behalf. “From a theological perspective … this is a part of the fabric of who we are as Episcopalians,” Powell told Episcopal News Service after the press conference. “Looking at our baptismal vows, if we’re to ‘respect the dignity of every human being and seek justice and peace,’ there’s no exception to who is included in ‘every human being.’ It includes all people.” View this post on Instagram Knox County’s Sheriff’s Office began questioning inmates about immigration status in 2017.  A detention bed contract with ICE has been in effect since 2018. Since 2025, more than 5,000 people have been detained there on immigration matters, according to data compiled by Meghan Conley, a sociologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Knox County Sheriff Brent Gibson, who was sworn into office on Sept. 1, campaigned on working more closely with ICE. On Sept. 15, his office signed an agreement to expand its involvement with federal immigration enforcement under a task force model that would deputize police officers to question and arrest people on suspected immigration violations. At the state level, the Tennessee General Assembly this year passed several immigration laws “even though immigration law is strictly federal jurisdiction.” The interfaith letter says the laws “answer no genuine crisis of public safety,” but instead “deliberately construct a climate of fear whose logic is not the protection of this community but the racial targeting of a particular population of people within it, discrimination now given the force of law.” “The harm does not fall only on those without documentation. It falls on U.S. citizen children in mixed-status families, on patients who will now avoid seeking medical care, on victims of crime who will not call for help, on families who go without food because they are too afraid to go grocery shopping, all because institutions our own taxes pay for have been turned into instruments of federal surveillance,” the letter says. “When fear becomes the organizing principle of public life, every last one of us bears its cost.” Another concern that clergy have, according to Powell, is that they’ve “repeatedly” been denied access to make pastoral visits to people detained by ICE, though they’re able to visit inmates who are incarcerated for non-immigration-related reasons. “It’s happened to all of us – Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, everyone,” Powell said. “This is why we need to be partners together to advocate for our immigrants and keep engaging in multifaith and ecumenical work on this issue.” The letter also calls on lawmakers to urge state officials to stop spreading “malicious falsehoods” about immigrants and for landlords, developers, business owners and institutions to refuse to house ICE offices and facilities. As an appeal to local law enforcement, the letter asks officers to “exercise every discretion the law still leaves you” and not arrest law-abiding immigrants. “Where the choice remains yours, choose mercy.” Nationwide, some 65,765 migrants and asylum-seekers are in ICE custody, according to the latest ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse Reports, an independent data-gathering and analysis center founded at Syracuse University in New York. The Episcopal Church offers several resources for Episcopalians engaged in immigration advocacy work, including its Protesting Faithfully toolkit. The resource offers “spiritual grounding and practical resources for faithful presence at protests and public demonstrations.” The church’s Immigration Action Toolkit shares resources from organizations that address migrants’ legal rights. –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at [email protected].

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal City Mission, a Boston nonprofit affiliated with the Diocese of Massachusetts, distributed $2.75 million in reparations to 25 Massachusetts-based organizations that are dedicated to promoting racial and economic justice and equity, truth-telling, reconciliation and strengthening communities. The announcement was made Sept. 15 at a press conference at St. Cyprian’s, a historically Black Episcopal church in Roxbury. Reparations are “part of our commitment to following Jesus,” Arrington Chambliss, Episcopal City Mission’s executive director, said in a Sept. 15 press release. “There is no reconciliation without repair given the history that necessitates this work. This moment is not an ending but an important step in a much longer journey toward truth, accountability, and repair,” Chambliss said. “We hope these payments will serve not only as a tangible commitment to repairing historic harms but also as an invitation for other similar Christian and faith-rooted institutions to engage in courageous acts of justice.” Since its founding in 1844, Episcopal City Mission has committed to combating poverty and systemic injustices at their root causes. Its reparations initiative stems from years of historical research, community engagement and reflection. The organization formed a committee called Reparations Advisors and Stewards to guide the decision-making process on recipients. Cynthia Perry, a professor at Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies, helped facilitate the initiative as lead project consultant. The recipient organizations, which are all led by Black, Indigenous and other people of color, address different areas of social justice, such as the Massachusetts Bail Fund for keeping low-income individuals from pre-trial incarceration, the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Indian Nation to support the original Indigenous people of Chappaquiddick Island and Martha’s Vineyard, and Resilient Roses Respite Corp. for youth and young adult programming and mentoring.  Reparations in the United States date as far back as the 17th century, when Quakers propounded that formerly enslaved people were entitled to compensation from their enslavers. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which included a formal apology for the U.S. government unjustly incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II and $20,000 payments to concentration camp survivors. Discussions of reparations for Black Americans made a widespread modern resurgence in 2014 after Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations” was published in The Atlantic. In 2019, Evanston, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago, passed the first reparations law in U.S. history to compensate Black people for slavery and discrimination. The city has given $25,000 grants for down payments or home repairs to more than 300 recipients since approving the payments in 2021. The concept has also spread to supporting redress for Native Americans, including land restitution and compensation, institutional accountability and monetary compensation. Many Episcopal organizations, churches and dioceses are in varying stages of considering, developing and implementing financial initiatives devoted to reparations, often acknowledging that much of the church’s financial foundation and physical structures were built on enslaved labor and other forms of racial exploitation. Reparations programs are underway in several institutions, including the Diocese of Ohio, the Diocese of Texas, the Diocese of Washington, Virginia Theological Seminary, the Diocese of Massachusetts, the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, the Diocese of Michigan, the Diocese of Chicago, and the Diocese of Long Island. Since 1994, seven resolutions at General Convention have supported reparations for various historic injustices, such as The Episcopal Church’s role in supporting the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Indigenous boarding schools, including C011, “Support Legislation for Reparations for Slavery,” in 2006, and A015, “Create a Task Force on Reparations,” in 2024. –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at [email protected].

[Anglican Communion News Service] The Most Rev. Renta Nishihara was installed as the 21st primate of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church in Japan) on Sept. 2, succeeding the Most. Rev. David Eisho Uehara. Nishihara was elected on the first ballot and installed during the province’s 71st general synod Aug. 31 – Sept. 2 at the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew in Tokyo. “I am committed to continuing to carry out my duties from the dimensions of personal, collegial and communal engagement,” Nishihara told Anglican Communion News Service. “Together with the laity and clergy of the NSKK, the College of Bishops and the NSKK and all the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion, I hope to devote my utmost efforts to advancing God’s mission as a primate of the NSKK.” Read the full article here.

[Episcopal News Service] All Saints Church Pasadena in California publicly confronted a painful chapter in its history Sept. 14, with the unveiling of a permanent plaque acknowledging and lamenting the parish’s participation in racial segregation during the Jim Crow era. The ceremony, attended by members of the community and civic leaders, included a prayer and blessing by Los Angeles Bishop Antonio José Gallardo Lucena, remarks by Pasadena Mayor Victor M. Gordo and a communal reading of the plaque inscription led by the Rev. Mark Chase, All Saints’ associate pastor and its director for justice advocacy and organizing. The plaque honors “the African Americans and people of color who were turned away from All Saints Church by its white parishioners during the Jim Crow era in Pasadena.” It also tells the story of eight African-American women who, after being excluded, began gathering in their homes to worship and eventually founded what became St. Barnabas, about a mile away in northwest Pasadena. “We acknowledge and repent of these racist actions, and we ask forgiveness from the descendants of those excluded,” the plaque reads. “Today, as we commit to living out our mission that all are welcome, we recognize our past history so that such racist actions may never be repeated.” The plaque was permanently placed above the cornerstone of the 1923 church building, and the date references the first plaque-unveiling ceremony, which took place a day earlier during the congregation’s liturgical homecoming observance. During the half-hour Monday midday ceremony, Chase, convener of the All Saints committee whose work led to the plaque’s placement, likened the effort to a farmer clearing his field. “Imagine a farmer going out to till the soil, and the soil has rocks and stones and glass and all sorts of things that aren’t conducive to growth within the soil,” he said. “Well, the farmer would be mistaken if they planted anything in soil like that. They would have to remove the stones and remove the rocks and remove the objects and anything within the soil that is not conducive to growth.” “Now,” he told the assembled crowd of approximately 30 people, “With this truth now being told, we have leveled and are continuing to level and clear the soil. So now that this truth has been told, it creates more space for a new truth to unfold.” In an interview in advance of the event, Chase told Episcopal News Service that the work leading up to the plaque has been underway for more than two years as part of the congregation’s Telling the Whole Story project, an effort begun in 2023 to examine aspects of the prominent Pasadena parish’s past that had not been fully acknowledged. The racial-history effort is the third committee to emerge from the broader project. Previous work examined the Indigenous history of the land on which All Saints sits (the land of the Tongva people), and a third committee has been studying the whiteness of the church’s iconography. St. Barnabas parishioner Marco White, who was among the attendees at the plaque unveiling, shared his thoughts with the ENS as the ceremony got under way. “I think it is symbolically important,” White said. “Obviously, it’s taken over a hundred years to get to this point. On the one hand, thank God we are at this point; on the other hand, it’s a plaque, and the most meaningful thing that I am hoping will develop from this is a meaningful relationship with St. Barnabas.” Chase emphasized that the plaque is not the project’s endpoint, noting that the project takes its name from the words of Indianapolis Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows: “‘You have to tell the whole story, so you can write a new story.’” The plaque and ceremony, he said, are “a step along that journey.” That sentiment was echoed by the Rev. Tim Rich, All Saints’ priest-in-charge:  “I want to say this with humility to make sure that we are right-sized in terms of our sense of importance,” he told the ENS right before the ceremony. “But part of why we did a church service on Sunday and now a more communal service on Monday is to inspire other communities and congregations to do this reflection and to think about what their history says about their identity.” For those congregations interested in doing similar work, Chase has some recommendations on where to start. “It is a national church call for us to wrestle with this and repair the racial history of our parishes,” he said. “But first, learn the racial history of your city, learn the racial history of your state, and then you will begin to see more clearly where your particular parish fits within that racial history. “Another piece of tangible advice that I would say is just get a small group of people together, and then follow the energy, the research and the commitment of that small group, and then it will grow from that small contingent. Also, I would highly recommend a seminal text that was a guiding force for us: “Black and Episcopalian: The Struggle for Inclusion,” by the Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart. In his remarks during the ceremony, John Williams, executive director of the Center for Restorative Justice, explained the ramifications of the plaque unveiling to the greater Pasadena community. “Reconciliation without memory is not reconciliation,” he said, “it’s amnesia. And that is why I believe this plaque matters. A plaque cannot repair the past; it cannot restore opportunities that were denied or relationships that were broken. But a plaque can interrupt the forgetting. Today we aren’t simply unveiling a plaque; we’re deciding what kind of city we will remember ourselves to be.” — Adam Tschorn is a Los Angeles, California-based freelance writer and member of All Saints Beverly Hills.

[Anglican Communion News Service] The Rt. Rev. Manasseh Gahima was elected primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda and bishop of the Diocese of Gasabo on Sept. 11. Gahima, whose installation is scheduled for Oct. 25, will succeed the Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, who has led the Anglican Church of Rwanda since 2018. Gahima has served as the second bishop of the Diocese of Gahini since 2019. Read the full article here.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally presented her first Lambeth Awards on Sept. 11 at Lambeth Palace Chapel to 27 people for their contributions to the Anglican Communion, the Church of England or wider society. The Lambeth Awards span five categories: the Cross of St. Augustine for Services to the Anglican Communion, the Canterbury Cross for Services to the Church of England, the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, the Langton Award for Community Service and the Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship. Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, historiographer of The Episcopal Church, received the Lanfranc Award for contributions to theological education and church history. Read the full article here.

[Church of England] An increasing number of Church of England parishes, some of them in the most rural areas of the country, are moving away from oil and gas and improving their energy efficiency as they brace for rising energy bills this winter. A match funding pilot scheme from the Church of England’s Net Zero Carbon Program, called Give to Go Green, helps churches pay for work such as under-pew heating, LED lighting, insulation, electrical upgrades and small solar panel and battery storage schemes. It will be expanded to all 42 Church of England dioceses. Read the full article here.

[Episcopal News Service] Every weekday at 8 a.m., over a hundred Episcopalians in the Diocese of New York log on to Zoom for Morning Prayer. From those on bus commutes to those sitting in living rooms, Bishop Matthew Heyd said, this daily service has brought the diocese together. “It’s a wonderful collection of the diversity of the diocese every day,” Heyd told Episcopal News Service. The Diocese of New York covers 10 counties, including three New York City boroughs – Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island – and the city’s suburbs and upstate cities and towns. Within its 190 worshipping communities, there exists a variety of liturgical styles and languages spoken. Morning Prayer is a chance to uplift each corner of the diocese and make connections where they might otherwise be unlikely, Heyd said. “I’ve met people,” the Rev. Cindy McCloskey, a deacon on Staten Island, told ENS. “Sometimes it’s just through that box,” she said. “We’ve never met formally, but sometimes I get a chat box, words from someone, and I’ll go someplace and they’ll say, ‘I know you from Morning Prayer!’ and it opens up conversations. Oh, my goodness, it’s amazing.” McCloskey was a postulant for the diaconate in 2023 when Morning Prayer began, and Heyd invited postulants for ordination to officiate. During the week of her ordination, she credited the daily services with preparing her spiritually, especially the Gospel readings and reflections on “new wineskins.” Three years later, McCloskey now helps run the slides and invites participants to read. In addition to the officiant, multiple people read per day, and over 100 people have preached from all over the diocese and The Episcopal Church. For the particularly isolated parts of the diocese, like the churches on Staten Island or rural areas, McCloskey said this is a way to feel integrated with other Episcopalians. Ashley Shepherd has attended nearly every day since it began – even from vacation. A parishioner at the Church of the Epiphany on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Shepherd said this Morning Prayer differs from other daily office services because of the regular sermons and the sheer number of prayer requests. “I write my prayer really quickly, and I read the others, and I pray with them,” Shepherd said. “Sometimes the support that we get from [each other] can carry us.” When the call goes silent for intercessory prayer, the chat box floods with long lists of names, places and concerns. Heyd said Morning Prayer has been a place to process current events as they unfold, and there are frequent prayers about ICE activity in New York City and for peace in Gaza. “We’re living in a tough time,” Shepherd said. As an activist, she told ENS, she has witnessed frustration and despair at community gatherings like anti-ICE rallies. “Maybe I would not be as engaged [in Morning Prayer] if times were not this horrible. I don’t know.” Morning Prayer also has been a source of grounding and routine for Judy Douglas, director of programs for Episcopal Charities and a postulant for the diaconate. She officiates once a month and attends multiple times a week, usually with her camera off as she gets ready for the workday. In addition to making new connections online, Douglas described one morning in particular when she invited a friend at just the right time. “I had been walking in Rye with a dear friend who had recently lost her husband,” Douglas said. “The time was coming for morning prayer, we were still walking, and I thought to myself, ‘oh, my gosh, should I just invite her to come to Morning Prayer?’” Douglas said she hesitated because her friend was Jewish, but they logged on together. Archdeacon Denise LaVetty began her reflection that day with a Yiddish term that Douglas said she didn’t know but moved her friend to tears. “Not only did it mean a lot to me to invite her in even though she was Jewish, that particular one she signed into was what she needed to hear at that time,” she said. Heyd wrote in a newsletter to the diocese that Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the original author of the Book of Common Prayer, would not have predicted that Anglicans would pray the daily office online, in multiple places at once. But in other ways, Heyd said, virtual Morning Prayer that celebrates the different charisms across the diocese follows in the Anglican tradition. “The diversity in the expression of the Gospel; actually in that way, Cranmer would have anticipated,” Heyd said. “The Gospel in our own language was a wonderful part of the English Reformation, and that reformation continues.” Praying individually is something Douglas enjoys, but she said the community that has been built from gathering day in and day out is “unbelievable.” “Where two or more are gathered, God is in the midst,” Douglas said. “When we see each other out and about, we recognize the person that we see on Zoom. And it brings us even closer together.” -Logan Crews is a freelance journalist and hospital chaplain resident in the Diocese of Missouri.

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Florida on Sept. 11 elected the Rev. J. Randolph Alexander Jr. as its next bishop, marking a potential turning point in the diocese’s prolonged and tension-filled leadership transition after nearly 20 years under its previous bishop, Samuel “John” Howard. Clergy and lay leaders in the Jacksonville-based diocese elected Alexander on the third ballot at their diocesan convention, taking place Sept. 11-12 at the Camp Weed & Cerveny Conference Center in Live Oak. Alexander, rector of Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill in Alexandria, Virginia, was one of three candidates on the ballot, all of them from outside the diocese. “I am humbled, beyond words, by this decision from the people of God in the Diocese of Florida,” Alexander said in a statement released by the diocese after his election. “The harvest field is ripe unto the harvest, the potential is immense, and God’s love for us is beyond our limited imagination.” Alexander was elected with 86 out of 129 votes in the clergy order and 78 out of 142 votes in the lay order, with 65 and 72 votes needed in the respective orders. The other candidates were the Rev. Dorian Del Priore, rector of Holy Cross Church in Simpsonville, South Carolina; and the Very Rev. Thomas Clayton Purdy, rector of Christ Church in St. Simons Island, Georgia. “It’s a blessing to see our diocese come together to select Fr. Alexander as our future leader,” the Rev. Justin Yawn, outgoing standing committee president, and the Rev. Bob Goolsby, incoming standing committee president, said in a joint statement. “We give thanks to God for carrying us to this day and all who led and assisted this process.” Alexander’s election still will need to receive majority consent from the bishops and standing committees of The Episcopal Church’s more than 100 dioceses. That step typically is a formality on the path to a bishop’s consecration, but Florida’s last bishop election, in November 2022, failed to earn the required churchwide consents over concerns raised about the process and allegations of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination under Howard. Because of those obstacles, the diocese has been without a diocesan bishop since Howard’s retirement in October 2023. The standing committee, after taking over as the diocese’s ecclesiastical authority, presided over a multiyear healing process that sought to mend relations between Howard’s supporters and those critical of the way he led the diocese for nearly two decades. Some of those critics filed complaints against Howard that became the basis of disciplinary cases under the church’s Title IV canons, alleging discrimination and financial impropriety. In September 2025, Howard reached an accord with Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe to resolve those cases without disciplinary action while also asking to be released from ordained ministry, meaning Howard is no longer a bishop in The Episcopal Church. In the interim, the diocese has been assisted by Central Florida Bishop Justin Holcomb, and Southwest Florida Bishop Douglas Scharf, as well as retired New Jersey Bishop Chip Stokes and retired Georgia Bishop Scott Benhase. During the diocesan healing process, members were also guided by the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves, the former Diocese of El Camino Real bishop who is trained in conflict mediation. Gray-Reeves helped facilitate a series of conversations across differences that diocesan leaders said were necessary before they could launch a new bishop search. In the past several years since Howard’s exit, the atmosphere in the diocese has greatly improved, Yawn, the outgoing standing committee president, told Episcopal News Service in an interview before the election. “There’s actually joy in the room when we get together now,” he said. Pending the necessary churchwide consents, Alexander will be consecrated as Florida’s ninth bishop on Feb. 6, 2027. Yawn, rector of St. Francis in-the-Field Episcopal Church on Ponte Vedra Beach, said he and other members of the diocese are excited now about starting a new chapter, with more clearly defined roles for both the bishop and clergy and lay leadership. “This diocese knows that it is not fair to the new bishop, nor is it fair to any bishop, that we expect them to do everything,” Yawn said. “We have our roles and functions. … I’m very excited about how far we’ve come on that.” The process this year of nominating and meeting the three candidates and now voting for Florida’s next bishop has been particularly invigorating for the laity, Yawn added. “They see their vote as a mark of what God’s already doing here.” – David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at [email protected].

[Episcopal News Service] A bishop in the Anglican Church in North America, or ACNA, has submitted himself to potential disciplinary action after facing criticism from within his denomination for appearing last month alongside an Episcopal bishop at a school chapel dedication in Charleston, South Carolina. ACNA Bishop Chip Edgar issued an apology to his Charleston-based diocese on Aug. 25, acknowledging that “photographs of me and the Episcopal bishop have caused pain and confusion.” Edgar and Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina both sit on the board of Porter-Gaud School, which accepts students in grades 1-12. The independent school, rooted in the Episcopal tradition, chose to maintain ties to both denominations after a group of South Carolina Episcopalians, led by their bishop, left The Episcopal Church in 2012 over theological differences and joined the newly created ACNA. The two current South Carolina bishops took office nearly a decade after the diocesan split – Woodliff-Stanley in 2021 and Edgar in 2022 – and have developed a respectful ecumenical relationship. Most notably, they worked closely in 2022 to resolve the decade-long property litigation between the two dioceses. Woodliff-Stanley, in an interview with Episcopal News Service, said neither she nor Edgar is naïve about the persistence of ongoing theological differences between The Episcopal Church and ACNA, and their dioceses’ mutual ties to the Porter-Gaud School have offered opportunities to remain in conversation. “To me, this is really about working across lines of difference in spaces where we can,” she said. In that context, the reaction within ACNA to the Aug. 18 chapel dedication has been disappointing, Woodliff-Stanley said. “We really had what I think was just a beautiful coming together and quite a lovely liturgy, and I’m just heartbroken and distressed that that would lead others to consternation.” Edgar’s precise offense wasn’t immediately clear. ACNA Bishop Julian Dobbs, head of the ACNA province that includes Edgar’s diocese, issued a statement saying some Anglicans were “shocked by what appears to be renewed communion with The Episcopal Church.” “The Anglican Church in North America is not in communion with The Episcopal Church, and those who hold ecclesiastical authority in our province bear a solemn responsibility to uphold this position,” Dobbs said. He also restated the common ACNA claim that Episcopalians had “departed from the faith,” likely a reference to The Episcopal Church’s record of embracing greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in church life. Edgar, in his letter, said some people saw photos of the chapel dedication service and mistakenly thought he and Woodliff-Stanley had celebrated Eucharist at the altar together. “The liturgy was planned so that neither bishop would preach or celebrate the Eucharist,” he said. “Perhaps the greatest outcry has come from a photo of me with my crozier and the Episcopal bishop with her hand on it. I wish I could go back and change that,” Edgar said. “Neither bishop was to carry a crozier in the service, as the chapel is independent of both dioceses. At the last minute I was asked to use my crozier only to mark the sign of the cross on the threshold of the door. “After that, I put my crozier away. It was not carried into the chapel nor was it used in any other part of the service. Clearly, both of our hands should not have been on it, even if only momentarily.” Under ACNA’s canons, it takes only three bishops to file a disciplinary charge, or presentment, against a fellow bishop. “A complement” of bishops took that action against Edgar, according to a follow-up statement from Dobbs on Sept. 2 that noted what he described as “the seriousness of the situation.” Edgar has “agreed with the charges against him and has consented to be disciplined by the College of Bishops when it gathers later this month,” Dobbs said. “This act of humble submission means there will be no board of inquiry, nor a trial.” Dobbs did not specify the date of the bishops’ meeting. Woodliff-Stanley said she has not received any similar criticism from her Episcopal colleagues over the episode. “When you look at all of the things going on in the world by which we might be concerned … to think that two bishops who have developed a holy friendship across lines of difference sharing a service at a school would create that level of consternation is mystifying to me. It’s beyond words.” Some church leaders in both The Episcopal Church and ACNA have cited the Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin as a well-established model for interdenominational dialogue and coordination. The Episcopal seminary welcomes students from both denominations, and its board of visitors and voard of directors include both Episcopal and ACNA leaders. The Rev. Matthew Olver, an Episcopal priest who teaches at Nashotah House and serves as publisher of The Living Church Foundation, posted an article on The Living Church website decrying the “swift and, in some cases, vicious” reaction to Edgar from some of his ACNA colleagues. At the same time, Olver voiced concerns about what the incident means for the future of ecumenical relations between the two denominations. “What, exactly, does the ACNA think the Episcopal Church is?” Olver said. Applying ACNA’s own texts to Edgar’s alleged offenses, he suggested Anglican leaders need not reject all interaction with their Episcopal counterparts. Unless ACNA concludes no ecumenical relationship is possible, The Episcopal Church “remains a church of Christ with whom relationship is not only possible but required.” Though the differences between the two denominations may remain profound, Woodliff-Stanley said she thinks church leaders are called to attempt the difficult work of conversation across those differences, especially to model that behavior for the students at Porter-Gaud School. Woodliff-Stanley cited a passage from 2 Corinthians 5: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Episcopalians in South Carolina are not interested in engaging in a theology of division, she said. “People are really eager to be […]

[Episcopal News Service] Sacred Ground, one of The Episcopal Church’s most popular racial reconciliation initiatives in recent years, just got a significant refresh. The 11-session, video-based curriculum for small group discussion examines the United States’ history of white supremacy and racism, as well as the church’s legacy of complicity in racist systems that still influence American society today. An estimated 30,000 or more people have participated in Sacred Ground circles since 2019. Now, in response to feedback from Sacred Ground group facilitators and participants, church leaders have revised the curriculum’s reading lists while improving its flexibility for potential use in ecumenical and interfaith circles. The new curriculum is now available for download from the church’s website, and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe will join an online event at 1 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 15 to launch the new program year. One of the significant changes is a new opening documentary during the curriculum’s first session. The church has added “Traces of the Trade” from 2008. It was produced by one of Sacred Ground’s original developers, Katrina Browne, who researched her own family’s involvement in the slave trade for the film. Andrea Lauerman is the church’s Sacred Ground coordinator. In an interview with Episcopal News Service, she said Browne’s film seemed an obvious new way to start the discussion series, which uses readings and documentaries to weave together stories of family experiences, economic class and political and regional identity. “The hope is that this [‘Traces of the Trade’] will get people entering into the program with a really clear sense of purpose and direction,” said Lauerman, a white lay leader from the Diocese of Maine. Another big change was to the core reading materials. Participants will still be expected to read Howard Thurman’s “Jesus and the Disinherited.” In addition, Sacred Ground circles now will have the option of either continuing to incorporate Debby Irving’s “Waking Up White” into their discussions or substituting “White Awake” by Daniel Hill. Other parts of the curriculum have been updated to reflect contemporary political and social developments since Sacred Ground was first launched. “So much of the world has changed,” said the Rev. Valerie Mayo, a Black priest from the Diocese of North Carolina who served the church as a Sacred Ground strategic consultant. The curriculum initially was developed for white Episcopalians to learn about the history of racism and the way racism continues to manifest itself in today’s interpersonal interactions and institutions, even when the people involved are not themselves racist. Sacred Ground’s documentary films and readings focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories. Circle participants also examine examples of systemic racism in today’s America, such as mass incarceration and its disproportionate effect on people of color. The church also welcomes people of color to participate in Sacred Ground circles, but it cautions that they shouldn’t feel obligated to explain the experience of racism to white participants. The new curriculum was revised to make it more accommodating for people of color who choose to participate, Mayo said. The curriculum, though still rooted in the Episcopal tradition, also now provides resources with additional context for Christians from other denominations. Participation in Sacred Ground first surged in 2020 during a national reckoning with systemic racism that followed the killing that year of George Floyd and other Black Americans by white police officers and vigilantes. Since then, the church completed one other revision to the curriculum before this new launch. Throughout the revision process, church leaders have tried to incorporate more action items into the discussion guides, so that participants will keep possible next steps in the forefront of their thoughts while engaging with the materials. Charlease Elzenga is among the Sacred Ground circle leaders already engaging with those revised materials. She is an Episcopalian who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but remains active in her home diocese of Wyoming. She led an online Sacred Ground circle earlier this year to help test the new curriculum. As a Black woman, she told ENS that she thought the curriculum needed to go beyond addressing people’s feelings about racism and move toward encouraging them to confront racist systems. “If you don’t change the structures, the laws that we have in place, the culture that we have in place, nothing will happen,” Elzenga said. The materials for the final session of Sacred Ground include “Becoming Beloved Community: Where You Are,” a resource developed by the church that suggests a series of possible next steps, from researching a congregation’s history to engaging in public witness on racial justice issues. “Notice the synergy between these commitments and the baptismal covenant,” the resource says. “Rooted in these promises, we are called to take up the work of the loving, liberating, and life-giving way of Jesus.” – David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at [email protected].

[Episcopal News Service] It has been 25 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Episcopal congregations in New York, Washington, D.C., and beyond are hosting commemorations this week as part of the nationwide tributes to the attacks’ 2,977 victims. St. Paul’s Chapel near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan will hold its annual tolling of the bells on Sept. 11. A variety of other events are planned in and around the city, from the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine to an Episcopal church in suburban Pelham. And on Sept. 13, Washington National Cathedral invites the public to a Holy Eucharist that will mark the somber anniversary of the morning on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers affiliated with Al Qaeda commandeered four commercial jets, crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania. “Twenty-five years on, we live in a world shaped by 9/11. Our lament for those we lost and those who still suffer will never end, and our grief is particularly sharp on this historic anniversary,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said in a written statement to Episcopal News Service. “We also mourn that, since that day in 2001, our common life has been deformed by division and fear of one another. Sometimes it seems that the chasm has become unbridgeable. “As Episcopalians, however, we know there is a better way. We saw it then in the extraordinary witness of first responders, and especially in the heroic relief ministry at our own St. Paul’s Chapel in lower Manhattan. We see it now across our church in countless ministries of reconciliation, peacemaking, and in our commitment to interfaith cooperation with our Muslim siblings in faith.” Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan has a series of events planned, coinciding with its proximity to the site where two of the hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers. In the aftermath of the attack, the Trinity-affiliated St. Paul’s Chapel, barely a block from Ground Zero, opened its doors to first responders and relief crews working at the ruins of the collapsed towers. In St. Paul’s churchyard, the ringing of the chapel’s Bell of Hope will begin at 8:46 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 11, marking the time when the first tower was hit. The service will continue for 45 minutes, followed by a musical reflection inside the chapel at 10 a.m. The names of the victims will be read at a 1 p.m. ceremony. Then at 6 p.m., a choral service of remembrance will be held at Trinity Church “to honor the lost and to affirm the enduring promise of the light that awaits beyond darkness.” In the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine will offer a Eucharist at 12:15 p.m. honoring the fallen, an annual service that often is attended by firefighters coming from an earlier memorial service at a nearby firefighters’ memorial. This year, the cathedral also opened its doors for a BBC crew to record a service for broadcast this week marking the 9/11 attacks’ 25th anniversary. That broadcast recording was coordinated with St. Paul’s Chapel and Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, St. John the Divine Dean Winnie Varghese told ENS. “It was very moving to have people from another country acknowledge a tragedy of this scale that happened here,” Varghese said. “They created some space in a wonderful way to speak to the complexity of it.” The cathedral will also screen the documentary “9/11: Reclaiming Ground Zero” at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 11, followed by a discussion of the planning involved with redeveloping the former site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. At 11:15 a.m. Sept. 13, Washington National Cathedral’s commemorative Eucharist will feature tolling of the cathedral’s bourdon bell and a Litany of Remembrance. The cathedral will also display its Pentagon Memorial Cross, which was carved from pieces of the rubble and given to the cathedral by Alvin Neider. The service will be livestreamed on YouTube. “Even in the face of unimaginable evil and suffering, God calls us to be repairers of the breach and restorers of paths to dwell in,” Rowe said in his statement about the 25th anniversary. “I pray that this commemoration of 9/11 renews our commitment to answer that call in our own lives and communities, and together as the body of Christ in the world.” The following are some of the other commemorations to be hosted by Episcopal churches: New York, New York: St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue will offer a vigil service at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 10 on the theme “Grief is the price we pay for love.” It will feature the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys and will be livestreamed. Garden City, New York: The Diocese of Long Island’s Cathedral of the Incarnation will hold a Day of Remembrance from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sept. 11 “to gather, remember and find solace.” Services are also scheduled at noon and 6 p.m. Pelham, New York: Christ Episcopal Church, just north of New York’s Bronx borough, has scheduled a Requiem Mass in remembrance of the 9/11 victims at 5:15 p.m. Sept. 11. The Plains, Virginia: Grace Episcopal Church will hold a service of remembrance at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 11. “Together, we will remember and honor the lives lost on that day, hold in prayer all those whose lives were forever changed, and look toward a future grounded in peace, hope, and reconciliation,” the congregation said in inviting the public to attend. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: The Diocese of the Susquehanna will welcome worshipers at Cathedral Church of the Nativity at 7 p.m. Sept. 11 for a memorial Evensong service. Norwalk, Ohio: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church will commemorate the 25th anniversary with a worship service at 6 p.m. Sept. 11. Columbus, Ohio: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church has scheduled a “morning of reflection” on Sept. 11, marking the times when the hijacked planes crashed. An ecumenical service of […]

[Diocese of Tennessee] The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Tennessee on Sept. 8 announced the slate of nominees for the diocese’s 12th bishop. They are: The Rev. Colin Ambrose, vice rector, St. George’s, Nashville, Tennessee. The Rev. Brian Cannaday, canon to the ordinary, Diocese of Dallas, Texas. The Rev. Andy Olivo, rector, St. Elizabeth’s, Ridgewood, New Jersey. Background information, videos and written material from each nominee can be found here. “At every step of the way, the search committee has taken great care to represent the fullness of the diocese and to discern those candidates who were most capable and most committed to being the 12th bishop of the diocese,” the announcement said. “They have done this work with diligence and integrity and we, the standing committee, are delighted to present the slate of nominees they submitted to us.” The 12th bishop will succeed Tennessee Bishop John C. Bauerschmidt, who has led the diocese since 2007. In June 2025, Bauerschmidt announced his plans to retire in January 2027. In July, the Standing Committee announced it would extend its bishop search. The Electing Convention for the 12th bishop will take place on Oct. 24. The petition process for nominating additional candidates closes Sept. 15. Pending consents from diocesan standing committees and bishops, the bishop’s consecration will be held on April 10, 2027. The Diocese of Tennessee, one of three dioceses in the state, includes Episcopal congregations in the central third of Tennessee.

[Council of Christian Churches in Germany] Following the outcome of the state parliament elections in the State of Saxony-Anhalt, Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany; Bishop Heiner Wilmer, chair of the German Bishops’ Conference; and the Rev. Christopher Easthill, chair of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany and rector of the Anglican/Episcopal Church of St. Augustine of Canterbury in Frankfurt issued the following statement: “We take note of the fact that the AfD [Alternative for Germany] emerged as the strongest party in Saxony-Anhalt by a clear margin. Our concerns have become reality, but we have to accept the result. The churches are particularly concerned about the way people in Saxony-Anhalt live together and relate to one another, and especially about respect for the universal human dignity granted by God, which is unconditionally due to every person. Our concern also extends to the free and democratic constitutional order in Saxony-Anhalt. We call on the election winners to fully respect the State and German constitution and to uphold the dignity of all people, regardless of their origin, religion, way of life, achievements or position. As churches, we are committed to the message of the Gospel and to the Christian understanding of humanity. In fulfilment of this commitment, we will closely monitor and critically accompany the actions of the future state government. We will not look away and we will not remain silent when human dignity is violated, our democracy is put at risk, or the rule of law is undermined. Ultimately, this is always about people who come under pressure, are threatened or excluded. We will continue to support everything that sustains our democracy and contributes to social cohesion. This requires, above all, spaces where people can come together, engage in dialogue and seek mutual understanding. This is one responsibility of the democratic parties. The churches, too, can serve as important places of encounter. An election result is the sum of votes cast on a Sunday – but in everyday life, what matters is what holds this country together week after week. The election result shows the extent of dissatisfaction and the loss of trust. This must be taken seriously. What remains unchanged, however, is how hundreds of thousands of people in Saxony-Anhalt and across Germany care for one another day after day, take responsibility for and help sustain our communities. As churches, we will continue to make their confidence, willingness to help and commitment visible and to strengthen them. Together, we will continue working for a society that stands together – in responsibility before God and our fellow human beings.” This press release is being issued simultaneously by the press offices of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK), the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK). About the Council of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK) The Council of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK) was founded on 10 March 1948 by five churches. In 2026, it comprises twenty-one churches from different traditions. A further four churches are guest members, and five ecumenical organisations have observer status. The ACK’s main areas of work are theological reflection, engagement for justice, peace and the preservation of creation, as well as joint prayer and contact with other ecumenical organisations. Among other activities, the ACK organises the annual central service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the Ecumenical Day of Creation. It is also responsible for awarding the ACK Ecumenical Prize. Members, guest members and observers send delegates to the General Assembly, which meets twice a year. Since March 2025, the Anglican/Episcopal priest from Wiesbaden, the Rev. Christopher Easthill, serves as chair of the ACK. The ACK’s office in Germany, the “Ökumenische Centrale”, is based in Frankfurt am Main: www.oekumene-ack.de

[Episcopal News Service – Minneapolis, Minnesota] Participants in the Full & Equal: 50 Years in Pursuit of a Promise gathering attended to learn, reunite with others,  celebrate the progress achieved thus far and prepare for the work ahead. Retired Bishop Nedi Rivera was a deacon in 1976 when General Convention passed Resolution A069 at its meeting that year in Minneapolis, declaring that “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church.” General Convention’s 1976 meeting was historic in at least two other ways. Bishops and deputies also broke with The Episcopal Church’s tradition by approving the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. They also set in motion the approval of what is now the current Book of Common Prayer, replacing the version used since 1928. Rivera told Episcopal News Service that she has since realized how “all these issues are so interrelated. I mean, we were talking liturgy – the prayer book. We were talking women’s issues. We were talking gay, lesbian. We hadn’t even considered trans issues in those days.” She also had a personal reason to come to Full & Equal. Rivera has a gay grandchild and one who is trans. She wanted to learn how to be a better ally with them and “how can I make a world that is better” for them, she said. Retired New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop elected in The Episcopal Church and in any major Christian denomination, used an image from his childhood to explain the impact of the gathering. He worked in the fields with his tobacco sharecropper parents. It was backbreaking and seemingly unending work but, he said, “every now and again, you stop and stand up straight, and turn around and look how far you’ve come, and you realize you can keep doing this, and you go back to work again.” The gathering reminded him that the work ahead is about trying to do the next right thing and looking for the next right thing. Most of the time those right things are accomplished in little steps, he said. Beth Whitaker, who attends Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin, would agree. Grace’s Pride committee is “the most active and energized committee in the whole church,” she said, with lots of support in the parish. The committee has expanded its ministry to include trans youth and their families. “I feel called to learn from this to help do better work at home,” she said. Fred Ellis, from Dallas, Texas, said Resolution A069 was “the reason I really became serious about becoming an Episcopalian.” Ellis said last week’s gathering was a good way to recognize “all the work that’s gone on by hundreds of people over the last 50 years to get us to the point where we are and acknowledge that there’s still work to do.” The Rev. Barbara Anne Fisher, of Richmond, Indiana, has been in the thick of that work. She was denied a Master of Divinity degree when she graduated from seminary in 1986 and instead was given a Master of Christian Education. She declined to identify the seminary. Fisher was ordained to the priesthood in 2017 after being “denied and denied and denied.” When she learned of the Full & Equal conference, “I knew I had to be here.” Radiant Energy, ministries coordinator at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, Michigan, said they are new to The Episcopal Church and attended to learn more about the history of full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the church. The gathering was “wonderful and challenging to see how much further we have to go,” even on a deeply personal level. Energy, who identifies as trans non-binary, was misgendered by some at the conference “despite wearing a lanyard around my neck with my pronouns on it.” Sean McConnell’s reason for attending was also personal. McConnell, senior director of engagement for Episcopal Relief & Development, has recently been coming out to people as bisexual. It’s part of a process of “being able to be fully who I am,” he said, adding that attending the conference was a way to continue that process. David Hales, deputy for administration for the Archives of The Episcopal Church, came to Minneapolis “to hear people’s stories and to understand the history that I’m not aware of.” He also wanted people to know that the Archives is interested in the storytelling that the conference wanted to foster. “This is such an important way of preserving our history, bringing it forward to remind ourselves of where we’ve been and where we’re going,” he said. “And as a gay man, that’s incredibly important to me. I’m not an Episcopalian, but I believe everyone accounts for something. And this is a reminder.” – The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is a freelance writer who formerly was a senior editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service.

[Episcopal News Service – Minneapolis, Minnesota] A gathering to mark the half-century since General Convention declared that “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church” was not a victory lap. Instead, Full & Equal: 50 Years in Pursuit of a Promise was “another leg on the relay race as we tell the stories of the past, as we reflect on where we are in the present, and as we look ahead to God’s future,” said the Rev. Susan Russell, chair of General Convention’s Task Force on LGBTQ+ Inclusion, which organized the Sept. 3-5 gathering with the support of the presiding bishop’s staff. The nearly 200-participant gathering was held at the Sheraton Minneapolis Downtown Convention Center. It fulfilled part of the task force’s mandate to conduct a churchwide audit of how The Episcopal Church has lived into its commitment made here in 1976. The task force is also charged with beginning a process of creating an archive of the history of the work for LGBTQ+ inclusion in The Episcopal Church. The goal, Russell told the attendees, is to learn from the stories and “make sure that we do not squander the inheritance we have.” Moreover, Russell said, recording and telling the stories of the last 50 years goes beyond the church and into a wider cultural context. “We, as the church, have an opportunity to give an example to a culture right now where there are forces at work trying to push us back on everything,” she continued. “What we’ve learned about pushing back against the kind of religious fundamentalism in our church can serve us as we continue to push against the Christian nationalism in our nation, the fascism that is trying to turn us into an oligarchy rather than democracy.” The gathering combined worship, education and storytelling to provide participants with tools and inspiration for future advocacy work and to preserve the stories of the last five decades. The participants learned storytelling techniques used by storytellers on The Moth Radio Hour. Organizers structured the gathering around the storytelling idea, with lay and ordained speakers telling some of the stories of then, now and next. The Rev. Cynthia Black acknowledged during the “Story of Then” session that the stories of then are often painful. “Obviously there are stories that aren’t about pain, but I think it’s important that we name the painful ones because they continue,” she said. “Part of the reason we’re here is to help make sure that the pain we have experienced is not something that continues, and that the young people today – or however old anybody is today – doesn’t have to live through what we lived through.” Anne Brown told a “Story of Then” about Episcopalians advocating for marriage equality. In 1999, then-Diocese of Vermont Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod and other lay and ordained Episcopalians testified about their support of marriage equality during state legislative committee hearings, Brown said. A year later, the state created civil unions for same-sex couples rather than allow same-sex couples access to marriage. Diocesan leaders decided not to oppose the civil union law, but to say, “OK, let’s go with this,” Brown recalled. McLeod took the new law “as an OK excuse” for several Episcopalian couples to have liturgical rites acknowledge their unions, including her and the Rev. Lee Crawford. However, there was no sanctioned rite for such a church service, so “we were all doing our own liturgies,” Brown said, adding that they did so in a way that did not get McLeod in trouble with the wider church. McLeod’s successor, Bishop Tom Ely, asked Brown to co-chair a committee to develop a diocesan liturgy “which sort of said that we were doing what we were doing within the bounds of our common life.” The liturgy that the committee created included a statement about the theology of such unions, “which was really important to show we were doing the theology,” Brown said. Vermont Episcopalians began their work nine years before The Episcopal Church approved a provisional blessing rite for same-gender couples. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, in wide-ranging comments during the “Story of Now” session, said there is still pain in the church and the world today. “The way that trans people are being treated in this world, in this culture, in this country, it is one of the many things that keeps me up at night,” he said. “It’s contrary to the gospel. It’s a scandal to the heart of God.” Rowe said, “The [church’s] old playbook for advocacy doesn’t work in this environment because it often puts people in danger.” Thus, he said, his office does not speak about its ongoing efforts to connect with and support people who minister to trans people. And, still, some of those efforts to aid such ministries and others, including assisting immigrants of all statuses, have prompted federal investigations against the church, he said. Diocese of Michigan Bishop Bonnie Perry told the “Story of Next” session that “the world needs the church.” “Our country needs The Episcopal Church, and the church needs us – compelling, faithful, lay, and ordained queer leaders; the church needs us. And some non-queer leaders of all types,” she said. Wounds, pain and sadness still abound in the church and the world, Perry said. People need to keep addressing their previous suffering “so that we may be able to go into the fraught world wounded but embodying the hope of Jesus Christ, that we too might be heroes.” “I think that’s what’s next – to be real about our pain, to do the work, and, oh my heavens, believe. Because the world needs us, and the world needs Jesus Christ.” The gathering ended with Eucharist on Sept. 5 in a packed St. Mark’s Cathedral. Retired New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson told the congregation during his sermon that the […]