Because It Is Right (Woodrum)

by the Reverend Paul Woodrum

The Rev. Paul Woodrum is a retired priest, most recently at the Church of St. Alban the Martyr in St. Albans, New York, and canonically resident in the Diocese of Newark. He is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and General Theological Seminary. He is now in the business of designing and fabricating contemporary vestments with his partner Victor Challenor at Challwood Studio. Those worn by Presiding Bishop Katharine at her investiture were their creation, as were those of Barbara Harris and Gene Robinson at their consecrations. Some of their vestments and other liturgical creations are on display at the Episcopal Church and Visual Arts pages.

He posted this reflection yesterday to the Integrity listserv, and it is reprinted here (in lightly edited form) with his permission.


Yesterday we had the order for the Burial of the Dead, Mass of the Resurrection, and shelved Victor's mother, Gwen, in the columbarium in St. Ansgar's chapel at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. For those interested, I followed Ron Miller's suggestion and used the "Into your hands..." from the Commendation in place of the Lord's Prayer after the Committal. Beautiful!

Being at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, two thirds of which was built under Bishop Manning's leadership during the Great Depression, providing hundreds of jobs as well as erecting a great edifice, I once again told the story of how Gwen's mother took the family to All Souls, Manhattan, and how the ensuing flood of West Indian Anglicans to the neighborhood and parish so frightened the then all white, male vestry, they declared a moratorium on any more people of color joining the parish.

Bishop Manning called the New York press to meet him at All Souls where, in his episcopal regalia, after knocking with his crosier, he took an ax brought by his chaplain and broke the locks on the front gates, flung them open and dramatically declared that no Episcopal Church in his jurisdiction was free to practice discrimination or segregation, both still de facto in the north and de jure in the south in the '30s, and that all Episcopal churches were open to all regardless of race.

Manning did this without consulting any diocesan convention, General Convention, special commission, the Mayor of New York City or the Archbishop of Canterbury. He did it because it was right, long before it was the accepted much less popular thing, and he challenged the church to live into what he had done.

This is what I long for in our present leadership when it comes to discrimination against women and LGBT people: for the Presiding Bishop and other bishops to say simply that we will not tolerate any more discrimination and bigotry and challenge the church to live into this, not because it is politic or impolitic, acceptable to some but not to others, but because it is right. No more of this namby pamby hiding behind commissions, committees, conventions and policy directives. No more tolerating seasons, years, decades or centuries of waiting for justice.

Heaven knows Bishops Akinola and Iker and Duncan and their ilk are not shy about making pronouncements that are wrong, immoral, and unjust. Presiding Bishop Browning called for no more outcasts but took six of his nine years to begin to live into that himself where gay people were concerned. Presiding Bishop Griswold was genetically too nuanced to make a direct statement. It's a new day. I hope we will hear loud and clear the old prophetic call for justice to run down like rivers and integrity like an everlasting stream. Shalom. Shalom.