Retirement won’t end bishop’s social activism
Published 9:00 pm Friday, November 18, 2005
Beneath the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner’s clerical vestments beats the heart of a 1960s social activist itching for a cause.
Warner, the head of the Episcopal Church in Western Washington, announced last week he will retire as leader of 36,000 Episcopalians in 103 congregations from Canada to Oregon. The news came during the convention of the Diocese of Olympia at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle.
Retirement doesn’t mean the faithful have heard the last of Warner, a self-described “activist and non-conformist” who lives in Edmonds. In fact, come January, the 64-year-old bishop temporarily will swap his mitre and crosier for a hard hat and hammer when he ventures to El Salvador to build housing for the poor.
Warner’s 16-year tenure as diocese leader has been marked by a passion for righting what he sees as wrongs.
“My whole emphasis is on social justice and ministry to the marginalized,” he said. “I want to work right in my own back yard while continuing to work with the Middle East, Russia, China … I want to build bridges…”
In May 2007, Warner will leave his office in the diocese headquarters on Capitol Hill in Seattle. It will take that long to complete a worldwide search for his successor.
There are 101 dioceses in the United States, overseen by bishops such as Warner. Clergy and lay representatives of the dioceses’ congregations choose leaders to reflect current issues and the state of the church and culture.
A genial man who prefers hugs to handshakes, Warner said he grew up Episcopalian and the lone liberal in a seriously Republican East Coast family. After graduating from Roanoke College in Virginia, he launched careers in business and advertising.
Life as he knew it forever changed in 1968 when Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Sensing an about-face calling and vowing to “seek the truth … come what may,” he enrolled in seminary.
“I’ve always been a spiritual person but an activist and nonconformist,” said Warner, whose zeal has gotten him billy-clubbed by police in civil rights marches.
When he rolled up to Virginia Theological Seminary, Warner said his first impression was of “jazz, bloody Marys and lots of humor. It was quite wonderful.” And, he added, not at all what he expected.
After graduation, he was called to congregations in places such as Cape Cod, Mass., and Grosse Pointe, Mich., where surnames such as Ford and Mellon dotted the membership rolls. Warner said he set spiritual fires under wealthy congregations to roust members from their comfort zones.
“The rich helped me do things I couldn’t have done otherwise,” said Warner from his home overlooking Lake Ballinger. That would include goading his flock in affluent Wellesley, Mass., to adopt a poor Hispanic church in south Boston, to the tune of millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours.
His liberal theological bent and championing of female and gay clergy and same-sex unions also have cost him support. He said his backing of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire drove at least one of his churches to the brink of shucking not only its diocese but its Episcopal affiliation. “But they’re not gone, yet. We’re still talking,” he said.
Catching the eye of the church’s hierarchy, Warner, who calls himself an “inter-faith person” and whose vestments bear both Christian and Islamic symbols, said he was nominated five times for bishop before he submitted to candidacy. When he did, he noted, he was elected in 1989 on a virtually unheard-of first ballot.
One of his first acts upon arriving in Seattle was to call for the sale of the mansion near St. Mark’s that was the longstanding bishop’s residence. “It reflected what I look at as a ‘royal bishop’ residence,” he said, preferring to use the money for social causes and move to more-affordable Edmonds.
Warner lives with his second wife, Shen, who he met at a reception for South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Shen’s son, Victor. Lending domestic background noise are German shepherds St. Luke and St. Lucy and Lucky, a shih tzu.
Warner dotes on 10-year-old Victor, a fifth-grader at Woodway Elementary, and adult daughters Virginia, who’s involved with re-introducing wolves into Yellowstone Park; Christy, a budding actress; and Lilly (aka “Hurricane Lilly”), a founder of the Rat City Rollergirls derby queens.
As a leader in a denomination he calls the “thinking person’s church,” Warner said he makes a point of visiting a different area congregation every week. Worshipers’ concern for the poor and victims of “racism and classism … and political injustice” is obvious, he’s observed, and appropriate for a denomination “with a strong history of ‘rights’ movements.”
Warner said he believes the biggest problem facing churches – and society in general – is “fear that keeps us from being faithful. Fear of what may happen. Fear of, ‘If we bless same-sex unions the church will fall apart.’ “
Warner points to his heroes – King, Rosa Parks and German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer – as “people without fear who stayed with their positions of integrity.”
He said he prefers to be around people who “don’t seek certitude but can deal with ambiguity.” He admits to having little in common with those with a literal interpretation of the Bible.
“Fundamentalism doesn’t provide an opportunity for dialogue,” said Warner, who says he believes in an ever-changing God (“Can He not be a ‘She’?”), but not the “same God Jerry Falwell believes in.”
Warner’s post-retirement title will be that of “freelance social justice bishop.” The job won’t carry a salary, but has rewards just the same, he said, adding that book-writing might pay the bills.
Warner pooh-poohs the notion his shoes will be hard to fill.
“If you’ve done your role, you can move and not leave a vacuum,” he said.
Paraphrasing St. Francis of Assisi, Warner said he will “continue to do everything (he can) to help and if necessary, use words. But we hear words too damn much.”
