Episcopal Church has a new Presiding Bishop

THE BISHOP of North Carolina, the Rt Rev Michael Curry, has been elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA by the 78th General Convention meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. On 27 June the House of Bishops elected Bishop Curry from amongst four nominees, making him the first black presiding bishop and the first elected on the first ballot. Bishop Curry received 121 votes of the 174 votes cast in the election.

The Archbishop of Canterbury telephoned Bishop Curry congratulating him on his election. The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Rev David Chillingworth, who was a guest of the convention, observed: “This is a good day for the Episcopal Church, for the world church and for the Anglican Communion.”

“You can’t put a label on him,” Bishop Chillingworth told The Church of England Newspaper. Bishop Curry has authorised same-sex blessings in his diocese since 2004 and has been a loyal supporter of Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori. However, he has intimated that he will seek to foster reconciliation within the Episcopal Church and restore the Church’s broken overseas links.

Asked if he identified with any church party, Bishop Curry told reporters: “Well you could say that Michael Curry was a follower of Jesus Christ.”

“I am a follower of Jesus,” he explained. “I am serious in saying” that. “The way of Jesus is the way of God’s love. It sets us free.”

He said he was “not perfect”, a sinner, who had been saved through the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross and the free grace given to him.

He told The Church of England Newspaper he wanted “people to know I really do believe in love.” The Episcopal Church “will be a house of prayer,” he said. “We must strive for that,” adding in North Carolina he had sought to foster an environment where “liberal and traditional people come together.”

“I ask if you believe in Jesus, and that is good enough for me,” he said. “We will deal with each other in love,” and he hoped the “spirit of God will create space” within the church for all.

One conservative bishop, who asked not to be named, told CEN he had not voted for Curry on the first round as he had been committed to the sole conservative candidate, the Bishop of Southwest Florida on the first ballot, but was nonetheless overjoyed by his victory.

He explained that while he did not agree with Bishop Curry’s conclusions, he shared the North Carolina bishop’s assumptions that Scripture and faith in Jesus Christ was the basis for all action. The new Presiding Bishop did not start with an ideology that Scripture was then used to justify — but began with the person of Jesus Christ.

This allowed “mutual respect” and “reasoning togeth- er” as “brothers in Christ” he explained — and opened the door for true dialogue and reconciliation.

Bishop Chillingworth heartily agreed, seeing Bishop Curry’s election as an opportunity for the wider Communion. “Michael Curry and Justin Welby share the same ideals, the same passions. They both love Jesus,” he said, adding: “This is one of those moments when a remarkable person with distinctive gifts steps onto the stage. Such moments are potentially transformative.”

Born in Chicago and brought up in Buffalo, New York, Bishop Curry was educated at Hobart College and trained for the ministry at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. Ordained deacon and priest in 1978 in the Diocese of Western New York, Bishop Curry served as rector to three black Episcopal churches: St Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Winston-Salem in the Diocese of North Carolina from 1978-1982; St Simon of Cyrene Episcopal Church in Lincoln Heights, Ohio from 1982-1988; and St James African Episcopal Church in Baltimore from 1988 to 2000. On 11 February 2000, Bishop Curry was elected the 11th Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina.

At the press conference held following his election the presiding-bishop elect said the Episcopal Church “should seek to address issues of poverty, racism” and social injustice across the country. However the call to social activism must be made in response to the call made upon our lives by faith in Jesus Christ, he explained.

The Episcopal Church should “seek to be a conversation partner with those dealing with poverty and racism,” he said, then adding, “let me take it further. It was the voice of the Christian community in Charleston that changed the narrative, from hatefulness to forgiveness.”

What the Episcopal Church had to offer to a suffering world was the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which would convict the hearts of its hearers— and “build God’s dream, rather than our own nightmares.”