CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES
In the past few days, I have been thinking a great deal about the choices we make, why we make them, and what consequences these choices may have for ourselves and others. What brings this up are two anniversaries that have absolutely nothing to do with each other but illustrate well the dilemmas we all face in life of making choices. I will return to the two cases momentarily.
The schism involved choices, huge ones. The consequences of these choices were also enormous and affected the lives of thousands of people caught in the current. To make the schism, a group of church leaders, mostly clergy, decided they had to break the diocese away from the Episcopal Church in order to preserve their understanding of God-ordered society, namely that women should remain submissive to men and that open homosexuals and the transgendered should be denied equality and inclusion in the life of the church. Then, the majority of the laity in the old diocese made the choice to go along with this separation from their ancestral religion. The minority of the clergy and laity also made a decision, that is, to remain with the Episcopal church. As a consequence of these choices, the two sides have been locked in a bitter legal war for the last six and a half years, a war that seems to go on interminably, even at the cost of between five and ten million dollars. This has become a war of attrition that took a bizarre turn recently when the Episcopal church insurance company revealed they have been making payments to the schismatics. The patience and faith of everyone is being put to the test.
And so, today I am thinking of two timely examples of cases where people made historic choices that turned out very differently.
The first is the case of my home church St. Luke's of Jacksonville, AL. Jacksonville was first settled by white people in 1833. In 1837, a large extended family arrived from North Carolina, the Hokes-Forneys-Abernathys. These were well-to-do people who became the propertied classes of the little courthouse town in the hill country of northeast Alabama. Col. John D. Hoke became the mayor, postmaster, colonel of the local militia, and founder of boys and girls schools. His wife, Anna Maria Whitaker Hoke, arrived as the only Episcopalian in the town of some 600 people. The rest of her clan were German Reformed and Lutheran. Rather than melt into the Methodist, Presbyterian, or Baptist churches in town, she made a fateful choice. She resolved on her own to make an Episcopal church. On June 30, 1844, by her arrangement, a deacon from Rome, Georgia, held the first prayer book service in Jacksonville, in her front parlor, baptizing three of the extended family's children. Gradually, Hoke convinced most of the rest of the extended family to join her little fledgling new Episcopal congregation. In 1847 Col. and Mrs. Hoke journeyed to New York, Anna Maria's home, to await the birth of a baby. The infant was baptized in Richard Upjohn's magnificent new structure at the foot of Wall Street, Trinity Church.
By popular demand from people like the Hokes, Upjohn published, in 1852, his landmark pattern book, Upjohn's Rural Architecture. It had a huge influence on spreading the Gothic revival movement across rural and small town America. The Hokes decided that they would build the "church" in the book and so raised the necessary money among the little flock, $2,200. St. Luke's church building was constructed and fully furnished in 1856 almost exactly by the Upjohn plan. Today it stands as one of the truest and best preserved of all of the hundreds of Upjohn "churches" built in mid-nineteenth century America. St. Luke's was the first permanent church building constructed in Jacksonville. The parish went on to play a major role in the history of the town as it still does. It all started with one person, a woman of firm resolve and faith. The choices she made turned out to be a boundless blessing to the people of her life and those who were to came after. It should never be said that one person does not make a difference. This one person made all the difference.
Next Sunday, June 30, 2019, the people of St. Luke's and Jacksonville, Alabama, will be remembering the wonderful choices one person made 175 years ago and the even greater consequences of those choices. Here is the memorial plaque in St. Luke's to the founding mother (it is rare for nineteenth century churches to have memorials to women).
"A Mother in Israel" refers to Judges 5:7 and Deborah, a prophetess and leader in Israel who demonstrated that God chooses women as well as men as leaders. This is a remarkable tribute to Hoke at a time when women were not allowed to speak in church let alone hold any place of authority.
The church the Hokes built:
The schism involved choices, huge ones. The consequences of these choices were also enormous and affected the lives of thousands of people caught in the current. To make the schism, a group of church leaders, mostly clergy, decided they had to break the diocese away from the Episcopal Church in order to preserve their understanding of God-ordered society, namely that women should remain submissive to men and that open homosexuals and the transgendered should be denied equality and inclusion in the life of the church. Then, the majority of the laity in the old diocese made the choice to go along with this separation from their ancestral religion. The minority of the clergy and laity also made a decision, that is, to remain with the Episcopal church. As a consequence of these choices, the two sides have been locked in a bitter legal war for the last six and a half years, a war that seems to go on interminably, even at the cost of between five and ten million dollars. This has become a war of attrition that took a bizarre turn recently when the Episcopal church insurance company revealed they have been making payments to the schismatics. The patience and faith of everyone is being put to the test.
And so, today I am thinking of two timely examples of cases where people made historic choices that turned out very differently.
The first is the case of my home church St. Luke's of Jacksonville, AL. Jacksonville was first settled by white people in 1833. In 1837, a large extended family arrived from North Carolina, the Hokes-Forneys-Abernathys. These were well-to-do people who became the propertied classes of the little courthouse town in the hill country of northeast Alabama. Col. John D. Hoke became the mayor, postmaster, colonel of the local militia, and founder of boys and girls schools. His wife, Anna Maria Whitaker Hoke, arrived as the only Episcopalian in the town of some 600 people. The rest of her clan were German Reformed and Lutheran. Rather than melt into the Methodist, Presbyterian, or Baptist churches in town, she made a fateful choice. She resolved on her own to make an Episcopal church. On June 30, 1844, by her arrangement, a deacon from Rome, Georgia, held the first prayer book service in Jacksonville, in her front parlor, baptizing three of the extended family's children. Gradually, Hoke convinced most of the rest of the extended family to join her little fledgling new Episcopal congregation. In 1847 Col. and Mrs. Hoke journeyed to New York, Anna Maria's home, to await the birth of a baby. The infant was baptized in Richard Upjohn's magnificent new structure at the foot of Wall Street, Trinity Church.
By popular demand from people like the Hokes, Upjohn published, in 1852, his landmark pattern book, Upjohn's Rural Architecture. It had a huge influence on spreading the Gothic revival movement across rural and small town America. The Hokes decided that they would build the "church" in the book and so raised the necessary money among the little flock, $2,200. St. Luke's church building was constructed and fully furnished in 1856 almost exactly by the Upjohn plan. Today it stands as one of the truest and best preserved of all of the hundreds of Upjohn "churches" built in mid-nineteenth century America. St. Luke's was the first permanent church building constructed in Jacksonville. The parish went on to play a major role in the history of the town as it still does. It all started with one person, a woman of firm resolve and faith. The choices she made turned out to be a boundless blessing to the people of her life and those who were to came after. It should never be said that one person does not make a difference. This one person made all the difference.
Next Sunday, June 30, 2019, the people of St. Luke's and Jacksonville, Alabama, will be remembering the wonderful choices one person made 175 years ago and the even greater consequences of those choices. Here is the memorial plaque in St. Luke's to the founding mother (it is rare for nineteenth century churches to have memorials to women).
The church the Hokes built:
From the happy choices and consequences of Hoke, we turn to our second example, one that is entirely different. It is disturbing but ultimately redemptive.
William Alexander Guerry was bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina from 1908 to 1928. He was way ahead of his time as he called for the creation of a suffragan bishop for "Negroes." The white racist diocesan convention flatly rejected this proposal but Guerry was undeterred in his advocacy of reforms to benefit African Americans. On June 5, 1928, he was shot in his office by a deranged man who had published a blatantly racist book, "The Negro Bishop Movement in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina." The gunman then shot himself to death. Guerry died four days later.
For decades to come, Guerry's death was treated as simply the work of a deranged man, absent of any racial element. Then, in the early 2000's, researchers Calhoun Walpole, now archdeacon of TECSC, and Thomas Tisdale, now chancellor of TECSC, began to round out the story in its full light of racism. Thanks mostly to the work of the staff of Grace Church Cathedral in Charleston, Guerry was declared "Bishop, Reformer, Martyr," to be celebrated on his feast day of June 9. He is now memorialized in Canterbury Cathedral among the great martyrs of the church.
Starting in the 1950's, the Episcopal Church began a great democratic reform movement bringing in dramatic changes for equality and inclusion of long persecuted, maligned, marginalized, and ignored social elements, namely African Americans, women, and homosexual and transgendered people. This was in the spirit of Guerry. However, in 2012, the leaders of the Diocese of South Carolina resolved to repudiate this train of reform. They declared a separation from the national church and led the majority of the laity out. The schism was the direct result of opposition to equality and inclusion of women and gays. Bishop Guerry is the spiritual forerunner of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, not of the independent diocese. Grace Church Cathedral has made a major effort to remind people of Guerry's legacy to the contemporary church. It has made a chapel in his honor. Yesterday, it held a grand service in honor of Guerry with an address by Walter Edgar. The Episcopal Church in South Carolina is the great beneficiary of Guerry's life and work. The consequences of grace were a long time coming, but they did arrive nevertheless.
So, Guerry made a choice, to advocate for the dignity and worth of every human being, namely African Americans. On the suffragan bishop idea, at least, he was shot down by the white supremacists in control at that point in history. He remained undeterred. He kept making choices to improve the conditions of people who were being persecuted for no good reason. He was finally shot down by a man who had shown a racist past.
What were the consequences of his choices? Guerry left a legacy that only slowly developed in the diocese. It was Bishop Gray Temple, in the 1960's and 1970's who really carried out Guerry's policies of righting the wrongs done to blacks and others. It was the minority of loyal Episcopalians in the diocese who kept up the social reforms after the tragic schism of 2012. Only recently has Guerry been given the recognition he was due. His name is now honored by the church as it should have been all along.
So, what's the moral of this tale of two cases of choices and consequences? The moral is we make the best choices we can in life according to our understanding of right and wrong. In the Garden of Eden humankind was given the knowledge of good and evil and also given the free will to make choices, followed by consequences. Sometimes these choices have wonderful and bountiful outcomes. Sometimes these choices cause our deaths. We make them anyway because that is our calling as Christians. We make our choices believing they are the right ones knowing that one way or another grace will flow from them whether beautifully as with Hoke, or tragically, as with Guerry.
This means that everyone caught in the schism has to make choices. We should make them according to our understanding of our faith, not because they are easy or will have immediate gratification, but because they are morally and ethically right. Sometimes our choices lead to bountiful blessings but sometimes they lead to immediate death. Either way, if they are the right choices, grace will flow from them even if it is a long time coming.
And so, I end with a favorite hymn of my beloved college chaplain at F.S.U., Lex Matthews (RIP):
They cast their nets in Galilee
Just off the hills of brown
Such happy simple fisherfolk
Before the Lord came down
Contented peaceful fishermen
Before they ever knew
The peace of God That fill'd their hearts
Brimful and broke them too.
Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,
Homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head-down was crucified.
The peace of God, it is no peace,
But strife closed in the sod,
Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing-
The marvelous peace of God.
