Jun 24, 2022 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements, #PressRelease
We received news this morning that the Supreme Court has struck down Roe v Wade. It must be underscored that this decision further endangers the lives of vulnerable women living in poverty, people who are often Black and brown. The road to restore justice in the wake of this traumatic decision will be a long one, and it will require tremendous conviction, compassion, kindness to one another, and self-care.
Our Presiding Bishop, the Most Reverend Michael Bruce Curry, has issued a lengthier statement than this, which both explains and grounds the Episcopal Church stance on reproductive rights in the legislation of our Church. Such Church legislation shows a long-standing commitment to the protection of life – the life of women, the unborn and of children.
Presiding Bishop Curry speaks to the reality of the impact of this decision, saying, “While I, like many, anticipated this decision, I am deeply grieved by it. I have been ordained more than 40 years, and I have served as a pastor in poor communities; I have witnessed firsthand the negative impact this decision will have.” Please see his full statement here.
This decision, coming as it does on the heels of a decision that fuels, rather than tamps down the wildfire of gun violence in the United States, is beyond disturbing. Our Supreme Court should, in the broadest sense, work to make Americans – all Americans – safer and more secure, more able to enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” not to make life more dangerous and difficult.
It should not be the case that the state where one lives, one’s race or economic status determines how full and free one’s life is. The Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization opens the door to a patchwork landscape across our country, marked by varying degrees of inequality.
We call on faithful Episcopalians in the Diocese of California and indeed all Americans to prayerfully pursue nonviolent and unrelenting efforts to work for justice.
Jesus of Nazareth, the founder and center of our faith, both honored the laws of Moses, and sought to purify the understanding and practice of them. Again and again, he helped people understand that laws didn’t exist for themselves, nor for the purposes of oppressing people, but to liberate all people, all of life. As an early follower of Jesus, Paul, wrote, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it has always been ‘Yes’.’” For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” I take this to mean, as Bishop Curry often says, that God is “… life-giving, liberating, and loving.”
In faith,
The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, PhD | Bishop of California
The Rev. Cn. Debra Low-Skinner | Canon to the Ordinary, Diocese of California
The Very Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, ThD | Dean of Grace Cathedral
The Rev. Greg Kimura, PhD | Vice Dean of Grace Cathedral
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.
