Episode 95
Good Ol' Anglican Reserve: Leadership Lessons from the 19th Century
What's more important, unity or justice?
Today we're travelling back in time with the Rev. Dr. Brandt Montgomery and the Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin to look at some influential figures from the Episcopal past -- John Henry Hobart and the founders of Saint James School in Maryland -- and how they influenced the shapes of political engagement of Anglicans in the United States. We'll examine the choices they made that encouraged justice and flourishing among God's people, especially among Black Anglicans -- or not; and mistakes they made that, however clear or unclear they were at the time, we can now see in retrospect. What can we learn from them?
One interesting pattern that we'll trace from the 19th century to today is the high-church Anglican habit of reserve, which often includes a strategy of gradualism or reticence when it comes to social justice issues. How do you balance social justice with a peaceful or coherent community life? Is it a matter of balance? Or some other kind of equation?
Together Father Brandt and Bishop Franklin will examine this speckled history as it plays out in these leaders' responses to social ills and evils, especially those that affect Black Americans, from slavery to civil rights. And what do the Anglo-Catholics have to do with all of this?
Bishop Bill Franklin is assisting bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. He was previously Bishop of Western New York, and has also served, among other places, at St. Paul's Within the Walls in Rome, as associate director of the American Academy in Rome, and as associate priest of the Anglican Centre in Rome. He served as dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and as a professor at the General Theological Seminary in New York and at St. John's University in Minnesota.
Fr. Brandt Montgomery is the chaplain of Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland, having previously served as the Chaplain of Ascension Episcopal School in Lafayette, Louisiana and curate at Canterbury Episcopal Chapel and Student Center at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. He is a trumpet player and profound lover of jazz, as well as a scholar of American religious history, Episcopal Church history, the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Last but not least, our interviewer today is the Rev. Mark Michael, who is our editor and interim executive director here at the Living Church.
Now ready the horses and hold onto your garters. We're headed into 200 years of history to see what we can learn for today. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
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