Paradigm Shift

A Reflection on where the Episcopal Church is going under the leadership of the Most Reverend Sean Rowe, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

Friends, fair warning at the beginning: this Parish Post is longer than usual. But I need you to bear with me, because what I want to share has the power to reshape the way we see ourselves as disciples in The Episcopal Church. I’ve just returned this afternoon from two days with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, alongside the clergy of the Diocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Georgia.  To our knowledge, this may be the first time since 1909—when our one diocese split into two—that we have gathered together in this way. It was historic, and it was more than that.  It was transformative.

I’ll be candid: I normally approach clergy conferences with dread.  Too often they feel tedious, predictable, and even a bit self-congratulatory.  This one was the opposite.  It was alive.  It was bracing.  It was hopeful.  And much of that came down to the presence of one man: The Most Reverend Sean Rowe, our new Presiding Bishop.

Now let me tell you about him, because you need to know.  He did not arrive with an entourage.  He did not stand before us in a mitre or carry a crozier. He never vested in anything other than what I can only describe as “dad clothes”—khakis that were a little too baggy and an Oxford shirt that had definitely seen one too many spins through the dryer.  There was no pretense.  No trappings of office. Just Sean Rowe, as he is. But in those khakis and that Oxford stood a man of formidable intellect and deep humility, and I found myself grateful that this is who has been called to lead us.  And maybe, just maybe, if the Presiding Bishop can proclaim the gospel in wrinkled khakis, the rest of us can let go of a little of our own pretense too.

What Bishop Rowe offered us was not a program, not a product, not a five-step plan.  What he gave us was a model—a way of thinking—rooted in Scripture and sharpened by history.  He began by naming our institutional sins as Episcopalians: our tendency to imagine ourselves as the smartest people in the room, above the rest of Christianity; our long-running conceit of trying to be “the national church” since 1789; our abdication of authority and our loss of faith in our own institution, mirroring the culture around us. He said plainly: at every level we lack capacity.  And yet, we remain well-resourced.  Which means it is time to cash in some chips and strengthen the platform—not for our own comfort, but so that the proclamation of Jesus Christ can go forward effectively.

He anchored this vision in Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem.  Paul and Barnabas had been preaching to Gentiles, and the church faced the question: must these outsiders adopt our customs, laws, and habits before they can belong?  And then came the judgment in verse 19: “We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”

We should not make it difficult. Those words have echoed with me all day. How often do we put up unnecessary barriers—sometimes through our pride, sometimes through our politics, sometimes just by our unwillingness to admit that the Spirit is already at work in people’s lives long before they show up at our doors?  The Church’s job is not to complicate their path.  The Church’s job is to open the way.

But here is where Bishop Rowe flipped the script entirely.  He told us the Church is not a circle with us—the educated, the privileged, the resourced—at the center, graciously welcoming others in.  No.  The heart of the circle, the true center of the Church, is the poor, the marginalized, the hopeless, the anxious, the lonely, and those who have given up—except on God. And we—the privileged ones—are the ones being grafted in from the edges.  It is not that we are generous enough to include others; it is that we are humbled to be included by them.

Among the most remarkable things I can say about Bishop Rowe is that he did not hold back his view of what ails us, what got us to this place, or what we need to do.  He did not stand on political correctness or pretense at all. He recovered for us—and encouraged us to recover for ourselves—the theologies and doctrines we too often whisper about in hushed rooms but rarely say from the pulpit: things like spiritual warfare, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming good news to the poor by actually spending money and sacrificing resources, running experiments, attempting to share our faith, evangelism.  All of it was folded into our conversation about what it means to stand once again on the platform of an effective witness as Episcopalians.

To underline this, he pointed us to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church in 20th-century Germany.  He did not present them as perfect models. In fact, he critiqued them for being too preoccupied with their own internal politics and not sufficiently committed to the liberation of the Jews. Their resistance, real as it was, came up short. And yet, Bonhoeffer’s witness remains: the work of building and strengthening institutions matters, because without institutions the Church has no platform to resist evil, to mobilize resources, to speak boldly.  We reflected on some of Bonhoeffer’s last words before his execution summed up thusly: discouragement and silence are not the Christian vocation.

This is why Bishop Rowe pressed us again and again: mission and institution are not opposites.  Mission without institution fizzles.  Institution without mission calcifies.  We need both.  We need the institution not for its own sake but as the platform by which the witness of Jesus Christ can endure.

And he warned us about authoritarianism in all its guises: the clerical authoritarianism of “Father knows best”; the political authoritarianism of governments stripping away rights; and the cultural authoritarianism of progressive cancel culture that silences and shames instead of redeeming. He was insistent: authoritarianism is not just a political problem, it is a gospel problem, because our story is not control or domination but resurrection.  Ours is the story of a God who raises what has been cast down, who brings life out of death.

At the end of it all, Bishop Rowe left us with a question, not an answer.  A catalytic question that has not stopped ringing in my ears since I drove away from the conference center this afternoon. It is a question I now put to you:

What does fidelity to Jesus Christ demand right now?

And here is where I want to leave you with my own reflection.  I believe the Episcopal Church is about to undergo a resurrection event—and it is sorely overdue.  Bishop Rowe was brutally honest with us: in the 1960s more than two million Episcopalians worshipped on Sundays; in 2024 the number was 415,000.  That is a decline of more than 75%. We are not alone in that; nearly every denomination in America has experienced the same.  But what sets us apart is that we are resourced to do something different.  We can begin to cash in our endowments, our influence, our power—not to keep the lights on, but to proclaim Jesus anew.  That is what Bishop Rowe is calling us to over the next nine years. Christ Church is a model of this work already underway. 

I am encouraged—encouraged that he is putting Jesus back at the center, building on the work of his predecessor, Michael Curry.  Encouraged that he is strengthening the institutional church not so that it survives, but so that it can be a more effective witness and a platform from which to proclaim the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ.  Encouraged that our Church is, in fact, being led by one of the most faithful, intelligent, humble, gentle, hilarious, and truly Spirit-filled Christians I have ever met.

And so I ask you what he asked us: What does fidelity to Jesus Christ demand right now?

I cannot wait to hear your answers.

Pax et Bonum!

Fr. Ben +