ANDREW PEARSON RESIGNS AS DEAN OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF THE ADVENT, BIRMINGHAM AL

The wardens of the Cathedral Church of the Advent, in Birmingham, Alabama, John Hargrove and Jay Ezelle, have sent a letter to the parish announcing the resignation of the Very Rev. Andrew Pearson as the Dean. His last Sunday of service will be May 16, 2021.  (Click on the image for enlargement.)

The letter is undated. I received it on 28 April. The theme of the letter is "tension." "Andrew has discerned that the ongoing tension he feels serving in the Episcopal Church makes him no longer able to serve as the spiritual leader of the Advent." 

The letter goes on: "Although the Advent has its own tension with the Episcopal Church, we are hopeful that the new leadership of Bishop Glenda Curry has provided an opportunity to build a foundation for a continued and generational peace between the Advent and the Diocese. Accordingly, the Vestry of the Advent appointed a team to talk with Bishop Curry to find a better, amicable path forward while protecting the essential attributes of the Advent." 

Thus, the letter identifies two kinds of tension: Pearson and Episcopal Church, and Advent and the Diocese of Alabama. Obviously there was tension between Pearson and the Vestry but this the letter does not identify. 

In a sense, the Cathedral Church of the Advent has been an extension of the pre-schism Diocese of South Carolina, and not necessarily in a good way, for the past twenty-five years. The last three deans of the Advent came directly from the Lowcountry and its predominantly evangelical milieu critical of social changes in the Episcopal Church. When the Advent became the diocesan cathedral, in 1982, the parish was known as a "mainstream" or non-controversial parish. This changed in the 1990's. 

In 1995, the first of the three South Carolina evangelical deans arrived. Paul Zahl was dean of the Advent from 1995 to 2004. He had been rector of St. James Church, James Island, Charleston. Zahl was quite a powerful intellectual and charismatic presence and moved the parish rightward while greatly building up the congregation, from 2,400 to 3,400 members. It was he who famously (or infamously) put out the black flag on the front of the cathedral when the General Convention affirmed openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop in 2003. Zahl left the Advent in 2004 to become dean and president of Trinity School for Ministry in PA. By this time, the Advent was squarely at odds with the reformist agenda of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Alabama which remained firmly in the mainstream.  

This brought in the second link in the chain, Frank Limehouse, who had been rector of St. Helena's, Beaufort SC, from 1995 to 2005 (Jeff Miller replaced him; Miller is now rector of St. Philip's, Charleston). St. Helena's was one of the leading parishes in SC espousing the vertical religion and opposing the reforms of the Episcopal Church (it went on to play an important part in the schism in SC). 

The third link in the chain was Andrew Pearson. He was an associate rector of St. Helena's, under Jeff Miller, from 2007 to 2011. In 2011, Pearson was hired at the Advent for Parish Life and Evangelism, serving until 2014. Upon Limehouse's departure from the Advent, Pearson became dean of the Advent in January 2014, at the age of 33. By that time, the parish had experienced two decades of evangelical and socially conservative leadership. 

For more on Pearson's background and his time at the Advent see my blog piece of Jan. 26, 2016: "Memo to Dean Pearson: No Schism in Alabama." Find it here  .

So, when the wardens talked in the letter about "tension" between the Advent and the diocese, they were talking about the anti-Episcopal Church attitude that has been brewing at the Advent for over 25 years. While the Advent was heavily influenced by the evangelical clergy from the Lowcountry, the rest of the Diocese of Alabama was not. It remained steadily in the mainstream of the Episcopal Church under great bishops as Miller, Parsley, Sloan, and Curry.

So, back to Pearson's resignation. The first question everyone asks is Why? Why did he resign? That we would have to get from Pearson or the vestry. Obviously they agreed for him to step down.

It seems the Advent may be having an identity problem. If so, the "tension" did not form overnight. It has been developing for a long time, for instance in the forms of corporate worship. In 2018, the Advent adopted "Our Liturgy" which can be found on their website. It is based on the TEC Prayer Book, but does not adhere to it strictly. The identity problem was how far the parish should move from the mainstream of the Episcopal Church into the evangelical realm, or, how much vertical and how much horizontal? My guess is that this was the problem that eventually progressed into intolerable "tension" between the vestry and the dean and between the parish and the bishop. So, now the parish needs to move toward resolving its discomfort with the contending strains of the vertical (evangelical) and horizontal (Episcopal). The  most hopeful sign in the letter was the part about a team the vestry had formed to talk with the bishop about better relations between the parish and the diocese. 

So, it seems to me the Advent may be at an inflection point. It may well be that the lay leadership wants to inch its way back toward the Episcopal mainstream without abandoning its self-aware vertical theological posture. We shall see as events unfold there. There is an interim dean, and presumably a search for a new dean. Meanwhile, let's hope for everyone's sake the "tensions" ease at the Advent.