Jun 17, 2022 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements, #PressRelease
In the unrelenting onslaught of mass shootings that continue to wrack our country, the shooting at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama has wrung Sheila’s and my hearts in a personal way.
I was ordained as a bishop in Alabama, and St. Stephen’s is a parish we both know and love. The former rector, the Rev. Doug Carpenter, is someone I have respected and cared for many years. I met the current rector when he was a student in an environmental theology class. I taught at Virginia Seminary.
Sheila and I send our love and the assurance of our prayers to the people of St. Stephen’s. “Prayers” mean, for me, a commitment to supporting gun reform; we must change so that the tragic, unnecessary deaths are stopped.
Jun 1, 2022 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements
From Bishop Marc’s Facebook post on May 24
Words cannot express the horror, shock and grief that Sheila and I are feeling as we watch the news unfolding about today’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. At this time, fourteen children — second, third, and fourth graders – and one teacher are confirmed to have been killed. The 18-year-old alleged shooter is also deceased. While we await more details, let us pray for the souls of all who have been lost to this senseless act of violence. Let us also pray for the injured, the first responders treating them, and the many terrified children, parents, and community members in the Uvalde community: This atrocity coming on the heels of the devastating terrorist attack in Buffalo is further proof, proof that should be unnecessary, that our country is in the grip of violent racism.
Loving God, your Son showed us that to love and care for children is how we enter the Beloved Community. We repent of the many ways we have neglected children, not least how we refuse to control our inordinate fascination with guns. We pray today, rededicating ourselves to be more like Jesus, to leave violence behind and to embrace peace.
Most vulnerable, we know, are Black, brown, and Indigenous children, children we care for and protect the least. Help us mend our hearts, our wills, our communities, and our nation, so that all your children are valued and protected.
And we pray for the families and loved ones of these children and their teacher who have been taken from them by violence. We know that you are always with all of life; may we be instruments, too, of your peace and healing.
In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, Amen.
May 21, 2022 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements
As the Episcopal Bishop of California, I want to speak to the public announcement that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be denied communion in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and to say Speaker Pelosi is welcome to communion in all Episcopal churches in the Bay Area, as I am sure she is welcome to many faith communities everywhere. I support Speaker Pelosi in her clear commitment to women, children, and families, her evident deep, personal faith, and her embrace of a country founded on principles that include, importantly, separation of church and state.
Further, my statement is aligned with the policy of the Episcopal Church that affirms a call for “…women’s reproductive health and reproductive health procedures to be treated as all other medical procedures.” Further, our Episcopal Church position declares “that equitable access to women’s health care, including women’s reproductive health care, is an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.”
For millions of Christians worldwide, receiving the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, also known as Communion or the Mass, is central to their faith practice. This sacrament of Christ’s Last Supper, a shared meal of bread and wine, is a sacred time of spiritual nourishment for the faithful of my denomination, the Episcopal Church, and many others, perhaps most notably the Orthodox and Roman Catholic branches of the Christian faith.
As someone who has known Speaker Nancy Pelosi for more than 16 years, I believe she is greatly strengthened by the Sacrament she receives in her Church, the Roman Catholic Church. In the midst of heavy legislative duties and during times of travel, I have seen her, over and over again, make time to attend Eucharist. She does this not only on Sundays but also on Church feast days, such is the importance of the Sacrament to her faith practice. I have also heard her, time and again, reference knowledgeably and reverently the content of her faith as the wellspring from which her leadership comes.
This sincere and enduring faith, with the Sacrament of Communion at its center, has fueled Speaker Pelosi’s tireless and historic efforts to stand in solidarity with vulnerable and oppressed people everywhere, women and children especially. Now, with the future of women’s reproductive healthcare in the United States imperiled by the Supreme Court’s apparent stance on Roe v. Wade, I would argue that she needs the nurturing Sacrament of Holy Communion more than ever. The health and, in many cases, very lives of women, children, and families — all part of God’s beloved human family — are at stake.
I do not imagine nor suggest that Speaker Pelosi should abandon the Church she loves so dearly and to which she has been faithful her whole life. However, speaking as the leader of the Episcopal Church in the Bay Area, let me humbly reiterate that every Episcopal congregation in the Bay Area will welcome Nancy Pelosi, as we welcome all who wish to join us, to the Table of Jesus Christ, the Holy Eucharist.
Our beloved Speaker Pelosi is not alone in this moment, rather, as Jesus assured his terrified, confused followers in the days before his arrest and execution by the Roman Empire, God has given the world the gift of the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God, present to all, and is certainly present to Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker Pelosi has my gratitude for her leadership, my support, and my prayers.
The Rt Rev Marc Andrus, PhD
Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California
Jan 21, 2022 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements
I received the news today, January 22, of the great bodhisattva Thich Nhat Hahn’s passing with tremendous emotion. I am overcome with gratitude for the ways in which his teachings and his life have nurtured my own life. There is a sense of relief that his luminous self is no longer constrained within his frail body.
My prayers go out first for Sister Chan Khong and the nuns, monks, and lay people in his communities in Vietnam, France, and around the world. Many of you reading this may join me in feeling a sense of loss and grief at the news of Thay’s death. Let us take comfort and be encouraged by his own teachings – Thich Nhat Hahn did not believe life ends when the breath stops. Christians too affirm, as in the Episcopal burial liturgy, that with death, life is changed, not ended, and we can trust that the most compassionate, loving people continue their work of healing and liberation. The resurrection of Jesus announces with certainty the triumph of life over death and love eternal.
We may find, just as Thay said in 2014 about his friend Martin Luther King Jr., that we can continue to feel Thay’s support and experience his help, even though he has passed out of this mortal life. May his teachings continue to inspire you, and may he and all the holy ones in light lend you their aid, and may we all experience the overflowing love of God that creates and sustains the Beloved Community.
+Marc Andrus
Photo: This photo was taken in 2019, during my visit to Thich Nhat Hahn’s monastic community in Vietnam.
Dec 19, 2021 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements
Yesterday, December 19, 2021, the Church and, most especially, the Diocese of California lost an extraordinary Christian. Ms. Melissa Ridlon died at Kaiser Oakland, with her sister Marcy and brother-in-law Peter, her cousin Barbara Carlyle, and her friend Dr. Travis Stevens with her. A number of friends were able to see Melissa in the past few days. Earlier yesterday morning, Archdeacon Nina Pickerrell had been with Melissa; then, Sheila and I prayed the Ministration at the Time of Death with Melissa and her family. On Saturday, Melissa’s priest, the Rev. Liz Muñoz, had alerted me to Melissa’s rapid decline and told me that, after her own prayers and conversations with Melissa, it was Reverenda Liz’s sense that Melissa was ready to let go and embrace the new phase of life with God.
Personally, Sheila and I are deeply mourning Melissa’s passing. Though we have a strong faith in God’s promise that “not one sparrow falls to the Earth apart from God,” still, we miss this great person and dear friend.
Melissa has contributed to the life of this diocese in beautiful and indelible ways. She has shaped how discernment for ministry, lay and ordained, is both conceived and carried out here. She chaired the Commission on the Ministry of All the Baptized and introduced the Day of Discernment to the diocese. As Vocations Officer, she planned and led ordination retreats before each June and December ordination, a special time for ordinands that capped the years she worked carefully and sensitively with each person in discernment.
Melissa was a faithful member of several congregations in the diocese, most recently Santiago in Oakland. While Santiago was going through a transition, Melissa worked tirelessly to keep their children’s ministry alive and thriving.
Melissa’s work also blessed many other ministries outside the borders of our diocese and nation. When the Diocese of California and the Diocese of Parana Brazil, our Companion Diocese, co-sponsored an Anglican environmental conference in the Dominican Republic in 2010, Melissa assumed a key role in the planning and carrying out of the historic entrance of the Anglican Communion into environmental activism and advocacy. She also held a deep affinity for Haiti, and her on-the-ground work there helped strengthen our diocese’s ministries in that country.
The above, though impressive, only scratch the surface in appreciating a warm, faithful, generous, loving Christian. Melissa’s father was ordained a Deacon by Bishop Pike on Christmas Eve, 1959. Melissa loved her father and reminisced about his ministry many times in the course of our friendship. Today I believe that Melissa’s father is welcoming his daughter into the larger life with God, and saying to her, “Well done.” Melissa showed us what the possibilities of lay ministry can be, and we are all better for it.
Almighty and eternal God, from whose love in Christ we cannot be parted, either by death or life: hear our prayers and thanksgivings for Melissa; fulfill in her the purpose of your love; and bring us all, with her, to your eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
Nov 19, 2021 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements
Grace Cathedral
Dean Malcolm Clemens Young and I today issued the following joint statement, written in response to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict:
Today in Kenosha, Wisconsin the teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty after he killed two men and shot another with a military-style weapon in the midst of a protest in August of 2020.
This trial is an important reminder that the presence of guns do not make us safer but rather more frequently lead to an escalation of violence. Guns make most situations far more dangerous than they otherwise would be. This is especially true when the guns are in the hands of civilians.
We decry both the systemic racism that still grips our country so tightly, and our unholy fascination with guns and a culture of violence. More particularly, our hearts go out to the families of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber who were slain by Kyle Rittenhouse and to Gaige Grosskreuz who was seriously injured by him. We also pray for Jacob Blake whose shooting at the hands of a police officer precipitated the protests that night.
We have to decide whether we are going to be a country that condones vigilante violence or whether we are a people who value equal justice for all, order and reasonable laws that limit the destructiveness of guns.
In moments like this we hardly know what to ask for or say.
Thank you for our precious lives and for the communities that sustain us and give us opportunities to love and care for others. Today we are a divided people and struggle to act wisely for the sake of the common good.
We pray for all those whose lives have been permanently damaged by the violent events that transpired in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We pray for a peaceful response to today’s verdict. We pray for wise legislation and civic action that will lead to prudent limits on the access to weapons in this land. We pray for an end to the racism that continues to damage countless lives in our time.
May your grace give us power to speak faithfully for the poor and oppressed. And may we find refuge in the love of your son Jesus Christ has revealed to the world. Amen.
“God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away”
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus
The Very Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, ThD
