Meet Our New Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is not necessarily where he's going, but where he's been.

The Most Rev. Sean Rowe took office on Nov. 1, the youngest Presiding Bishop in the church’s history. Typically that installation ceremony happens here at the Cathedral; Bishop Sean opted for a smaller online ceremony at church HQ in New York.

And yes, before you ask, eventually Bishop Sean will formally take his seat here at the Cathedral at a date that is currently TBD. Since the 1940s, this Cathedral has been designated as the official seat of the Presiding Bishop.

In an interview with Yonat Shimron over at Religion News Service, Bishop Sean talks about the necessary changes that will be coming for a smaller, leaner denomination. His willingness to take a second look at our sacred cows is part of the reason he was overwhelmingly elected on the first ballot.

But there’s also this bit from his background, which seems applicable in this current moment in our national life:

You grew up in the Rust Belt as all these factories closed. How did that affect you?

I actually experienced what it is to have things you love and value almost evaporate overnight. For what felt like a period of five or six years in the region where I was, things just evaporated — the major steel employer and the ancillary shops and all the things that support an industry — they just went away. Sharon Steel was a corporate raider who bankrupted it and just siphoned all the money out of it and thousands of people were unemployed. A couple of generations of my family were steelworkers. You could graduate from high school, go to the mill, get a job. My uncles were millwrights. In the hierarchy of the steel world, it’s a skilled worker, somebody who can, who fixes the machines. So you could make a living. You weren’t wealthy but you could raise a family. Then it disappeared.

There’s all the reactions to change — the grief, the anger, the vain hope that it’s gonna come back — but ultimately a kind of practicality and resilience says, ‘OK, this is the reality. This is the hand we’ve been dealt. Now we have to do something different with this.’ That has always stuck with me. These men and women figured it out. I think it taught me about resilience and it taught me about the need for change and how when it comes your way, you’ve got choices. That’s why I’m not panicked about where the church is at all. We have a compelling mission and vision and it’s an alternative to the prevailing one. 

Full disclosure: Yours truly used to be the editor-in-chief at Religion News Service before joining the Cathedral, and I’ve known the talented Yonat for the better part of 25 years. She’s one of the best in the business.

(photo courtesy Andrew Morehead / Episcopal News Service)