Thoughts from the House of Bishops

I have not posted anything here for a while, so I will share with you all the report from the House of Bishops that I sent to the folks in the Diocese of Arizona:

Wednesday afternoon
March 12, 2008

The spring House of Bishops Meeting in Camp Allen has just concluded and I want share my impressions with you before I head back to Phoenix.

We have enjoyed 6 days of fellowship, prayer (we worshipped together three times a day), great preaching and teaching against the backdrop of a springtime in rural Texas. I even managed to join some colleagues for a couple of hours of horseback-riding!

Much of our time together was spent on the hearing of reports and presentations, but the meeting was framed by two very emotional bookends.

The first was the announcement that in spite of intensive lobbying by many bishops of our church, the Archbishop of Canterbury has decided not to permit Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire to participate in any capacity at the upcoming Lambeth Conference in July. Although Bishop Robinson was the only American bishop not to receive a formal invitation, it had been hoped that a way could be found to have him present in an unofficial capacity. This news was greeted with great sadness by most of the House, and we are working to find ways support our brother during our time in England, and especially to invite our counterparts in the Anglican Communion to meet with him. I invite you to read all the documents that are posted on the Episcopal News Service website, including Bishop Robinson’s very moving response to the Lambeth decision, as well as a resolution passed by the House in support of him. Whether one agrees with him or not, it is important to remember that he is a duly elected Bishop and that his exclusion is hurtful not only to him, but to the integrity of the American church.

The other sad moment in our time together came when we took action to depose two bishops of the church who had violated their ordination vows by working to take parishes out of the Episcopal Church, Bishop John-David Scofield of San Joaquin, and Bishop William Cox, retired Suffragan of Maryland. This action was taken after long moments of prayer and silence reflection on the floor of the house. All of us wished to be as charitable and forgiving as possible, but the fact remains that both bishops have worked for many years to separate themselves from our church and in doing so have cause great harm to their dioceses. We consider our action to be a recognition of an existing situation, and not a punitive action.

Many of the presentations we heard focused, appropriately enough, on reconciliation and on our need to go to the Lambeth conference in as open, humble, and cooperative way as possible. We spent an entire learning about “faith-based reconciliation” and how it has been successfully practiced in our own church in around the world. We also renewed our commitment to anti-racism training.

As always, there were a number of practical items. We can expect, for example, some changes in our clergy medical insurance program that should result in considerable savings. We also received some training in dealing with media which will come in handy when we are interviewed by reporters this summer.

I continue to be impressed by the great wealth of talent and diverse thinking of the bishops of the American church, and their willingness to undertake decisions prayerfully and seriously.

A prayer used by our chaplains at worship each day sums it all up:

Give to your Church, O God,
a bold vision and a daring charity,
a refreshed wisdom and a courteous understanding,
that the eternal message of your Son
may be acclaimed as the good news of the age;
through him who makes all things new,
even Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen

A Dog-loving Bishop

The spark of reading the excellent new book by Larry Witham, A City Upon A Hill, How Sermons Changed the Course of American History, has rekindled my interest in the history of the Episcopal Church in this Country, as evidenced by my obsession with Arizona Missionary Pioneer Endicott Peabody (see the entry below).

It is amazing how much interesting material is available on the Internet, thanks to such sites as Project Canterbury. This weekend, I stumbled across a great picture of the Rt. Rev. William Doane, who was the first bishop of Albany. He also was for a time the rector of St. John's Church in W.Hartford, where I was curate back in the 1980's. I found on-line a contemporary biography which included a poem he had written about his St Bernard dog, Cluny. It's not bad theology, and is a great picture, both of which I share with you here. Could Bishop Doane ever have imagined that his work and likeness would be found in an electronic archive and flashed around the world 150 years later?

A Christmas Message

A Christmas Message from Bishop Smith


O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.

---Philips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”


“Be born in us today.” This is my prayer for all of us in the Diocese of Arizona this Christmas season. As followers of the Christ Child, our celebration is far more than just a commemoration of a stupendous act that happened long ago. Our calling is rather to reflect in our own flesh and blood the reality of God’s becoming flesh and dwelling with us as one of us. Just as God took our full humanity in Jesus, so he expects our humanity to reflect his divinity in all that we do. If God was incarnate in Jesus, that means that Jesus can be incarnate in us. We become the means through which Christ is born into the world.

How would those around us know that Christ is born in us? Simply through the countless small ways that we reflect God’s love for all creation. As St Francis used to say, “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary, us words.” They would see it in the way we treat each other, in how we spend our time, with what we do with our talents and possessions, and above all in our willingness to share the Good News with others.

As I have traveled around the Diocese this past year, I have witnessed countless ways in which Arizona Episcopalians have birthed Christ into the world. I have seen a new courage among church members to share their faith with others. I have been impressed with the growth of programs for children and youth. I have rejoiced in a renewed concern for creation and especially for the needs of the desperately poor of the world.

Of course, we still have along way to go. Our growing State needs more communities of worship. Our country needs to learn from us what it means to care for the stranger in our midst. Congregations need to understand that mission to others, not maintenance of the status quo, is the essence of our baptismal promise.

It is well neigh impossible to ignore an impending birth. That baby is coming, ready or not, whether means being born into a sterile hospital, the back seat of a tax cab, or into a feeding trough in a barn. God has been born into our world. That is a fact we cannot igmore. Now it is time for him to be born into our hearts.

May you all have a blessed and holy Christmas season!




Icon image copywrite: Laura Fisher Smith

Beowolf and Hollywood

Last week I had the opportunity to see the hit movie Beowolf. As a sometime medievalist and Anglo-Saxon period history buff, I looked forward to this special effects treatment of the earliest English writing. As pure entertainment, I would give it an A, but as history or literature, an F would be generous. The story as told by Hollywood has only the slightest resemblance to the great 8th Century poem. What was intended as a epic portrayal of the struggle of good and evil has been turned into a predictable sentimental love triangle. Gone is the poetry,the mystery; what remains is bland dialogue and Angelina Jolie as a naked water demon in stilleto heels.

What was especially disappointing was how Hollywood has turn a Christian story into an anti-Christian polemic about how the age of heroes has been replaced by simpering Christian whimps. It is hard to believe that the writers ever even read the original story!

But my biggest sadness is that now millions of young people will think they have seen and understood the story of Beowolf without ever experiencing the brillance of the original epic. Do yourself a favor, rummage through your old college textbook collection and enjoy it all over again.

The Internet: An engine for schism?

I have just finished reading Alex Wright's fascinating history of information management called Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages (Joseph Henry Press, 2007). In it, he examines human attempts to organize information from prehistoric beads, ancient libraries, monastic proto-bloggers, Thomas Jefferson's Library, and the Dewey Decimal System, all leading up to a history and critique of the World Wide Web.

It is no surprise that he has some thoughts on how the web affects human consciousness.


Before the age of television, many historians believed that the spread of literacy signaled the forward marc of technological progress, in which human civilization was moving inexorably forward toward higher degrees of social complexity....Recent history, however, seems to support an alternative view that in our modern technological era human culture may not be moving unidirectionally at all, but rather multidirectionally. The notion of inevitable progress towards hierarchical complexity began to fracture in the 1960's, with the rise of the great modern liberation movements:civil rights, the antiwar movement,feminism, sexual liberation, gay rights. All of these social movements also happen to coincide with the spread of electronic media. p. 236.


In short, the web is a corrosive force for any centralized authority. I don't think is much of a jump to apply his conclusions to our Church today. It has often been pointed out that before e-mail, no one cared about the World Wide Anglican Communion.
What the American Church was up to was unknown to the African Churches. Now, with every action of every bishop instantly analyzed and criticized by millions, and self-appointed bloggers emerging as the semi-official spokesperson for any given theological view, the ecclesiastical world has changed.

Where Wright takes this idea deeper is in assertion that web cultural represents, in spite of its written form, a new "oral" culture which tends towards tribal self interest.

Fueled by the growth of personal computing and network technology, many organizations have since had to come to terms with the ongoing transfer of power, away from the old central planning hierarchies and towards increasingly self-organized groups of individuals. p. 238

I suspect we have seen these forces at work with the dissident movements within our own church--witness the continued fracturing of those groups leaving TEC--as well as the more positive "emergent" movements both within and without our existing organizational structures.

For a culture which is essentially a 19th century informational book culture, I believe we ignore the impact of the digital age to our own peril.

Thanksgiving Day

Greetings to our internet friends!

We attended services at the cathedral this morning
where I preached and celebrated. Earlier, we helped at
the annual cathedral breakfast for the homeless.

This afternoon we will be with some friends at their
home in Tempe. They are both gourmet cooks, so the
fare will be spectacular.

In the midst of the abundance we enjoy, let's not
forget the hungry, especially those recovering from
the typhoon in Asia. The attached picture was taken
there yesterday as women line up for the small amount
of food that is there.

You can help in these an other places by contributing
to Episcopal Relief and Development (www.er-d.org) or
other charities of your choice.

May you all have a great day with those you love!

Endicott Peabody

One of the privileges enjoyed by an Episcopal Bishop is the ability to add to the liturgical calendar those local “saints” worthy of veneration by the faithful of the diocese. This is the first step towards eventually having that person’s name added to the liturgical calendar of the National Church, printed in the Book of Common Prayer.


In my time as Bishop of Arizona I have been struck by the contribution of two outstanding missionaries. Padre Eusebio Kino, the 17th Century Italian Jesuit who explored Arizona and northern Mexico, and the Rev. Endicott Peabody, who, before his over 55 years as Headmaster of Groton School in Massachusetts, founded in 1882 St. Paul’s Church in Tombstone, the oldest Protestant congregation in the state.

As I announced in our recent Diocesan Convention, I intend to add the commemoration of both these men to our liturgical calendar, beginning this year.

On Saturday, Nov. 17th at 11 a.m. at Trinity Cathedral, Phoenix I will celebrate and preach at the first such service for Endicott Peabody. This is the anniversary of his death on that day in 1944, and it also marks the 150th year of his birth. You are all welcome to join members of the Peabody family, former Groton School headmasters, and members of St. Paul’s Church, Tombstone for that service.

Having read most of Dr. Peabody’s correspondence with the first Bishop of Arizona, his friend Julius Atwood (in whose former house I now live), as well as his biography, Peabody of Groton, I feel a certain spiritual kinship to this great man. I am certain his life will continue to be an inspiration to future generations of Arizona Episcopalians. In addition, should his name be added to Book of Common Prayer calendar, he would be the first head of an Episcopal School to be so honored.

I have attached propers for this special day below and invite you to use them in your own parish celebrations on, or near, that day. Padre Eusebio Kino will likewise be remembered on Mar. 15, 2008 at Tucumcacori Mission, near Tubac. Propers for that service will be forthcoming.

I hope that you will join me in honoring the witness of these two great missionaries and important figures in our Arizona history.