Presiding Bishop-Elect Sean Rowe
By Bishop Frank Logue
In a first-ballot election among a slate of five well-qualified candidates, the bishops of the Episcopal Church elected the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe to become the next Presiding Bishop. At 49, he is the youngest person chosen to lead our church. I met Sean in the fall of 1997 when we both arrived at Virginia Theological Seminary. At 22, he was the youngest person in our class of more than forty seminarians. He would go on to be the youngest bishop in the Anglican Communion for many years after being elected on the first ballot at the age of 32 from a slate of four well-qualified candidates seeking to be the Bishop of the Diocese of Northwest Pennsylvania. When you get to know Sean, the pattern is not surprising.
He is the one so many of us in the House of Bishops go to for counsel. By the time of his installation as Presiding Bishop, he will have served for 17 years in this unique call. He has a pastor’s heart and knows the role well. He loves our church and yet sees how we must change to respond to the challenges of decreased membership, giving, and attendance. Yet, he is not interested at all in the institution for its own sake, but for the sake people who need to know Jesus.
In seminary, I immediately came to respect his keen intellect, deep faith in Jesus, and his often surprising sense of humor. In a homiletics class, we each found our very different voices as preachers alongside one another. While there is only one Bishop Michael Curry, Sean will always seriously engage with scripture in a sermon that challenges you or challenges our church. The sermon he preached for the closing Eucharist of the 81st General Convention is a perfect example of his seeking to put faith into practice: Sermon for Closing Eucharist
Sean said, “And finally, what about our idolatry of structures and practices that exclude and diminish our witness? We have to get it together. That’s going to mean laying some things down.” By the end of the day, an announcement went out to the church that our Presiding Bishop-Elect canceled the big, expensive installation at Washington National Cathedral opting for a small service in the chapel of our Episcopal Church Center that will be broadcast to the church online.
The bishops discerned this call and it was a surprising one for outside observers, but the spiritual discernment we did led us to see Bishop Sean Rowe as the right Presiding Bishop for the nine years ahead. He is signaling bold leadership saying “God is calling the Episcopal Church into a new future.” What you can know about our new Presiding Bishop is that he is a good man, a faithful pastor, and a devoted follower of Jesus who appreciates what our church can offer a lost and hurting world too much to let us languish.