Bucks County Herald – April 2, 2009

Rev Ann Smith

Dear Friends,

Good morning. My father used to tell me that news is not when dog bites man…it’s when man bites dog. I thought about that after a conversation with the better half of one of my book club members.

The book club meets at one of the homes five times each year. At the February meeting, I was fortunate to sit next to Dr. Kaighn Smith’s wife, Ann. She’s a retired Episcopal priest. That’s not so unusual. There are plenty of female Episcopal priests in America. In fact, The Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop over the American Episcopal church, is a woman.

What caught my attention was that this lovely white woman became the Assistant Priest at the Church of the Advocate, a predominantly African-American Episcopal Church in North Philadelphia. How did this unusual story begin, I wondered?

Her response was inspiring. Reverend Ann Smith “felt called” to become a priest at age 55. There’s an important lesson here. Follow your dreams. “Be not afraid,” is one of the movements in Mendelssohn’s epic “Elijah,” and it certainly has meaning here.

Ann Smith had an epiphany in the late 1960’s.

It was a time of widespread unrest in America. From 1963 to 1973, The Right Reverend Robert DeWitt was Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, composed of 167 parishes throughout Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery and Chester Counties. The decade was tumultuous.

“The Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War Movement led to protests, demonstrations and riots that produced significant social and societal changes,” Reverend Smith began. “The churches were not immune to the conflicts sweeping across the country. Liberation theology, which proclaimed justice for the poor and the oppressed, began to move from Latin America into the staid and comfortable Episcopal Churches.

“In the late ‘60’s, race had become a major issue,” she continued. “Race riots followed the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in major cities across the U. S. There was a race riot in North Philadelphia, a few blocks from the Episcopal Church of the Advocate. The Reverend Paul Washington, an African American and a charismatic preacher was the rector there.

“In another section of North Philadelphia, liberal Episcopal clergy were joined by clergy of other faiths in protests against Stephen Girard’s will which established Girard College, a school for white-orphaned-boys,” she said. “Those protests helped to influence the Philadelphia Orphans Court to overthrow the white-only clause and permit blacks to attend as well.

“Like the rest of the nation, the Diocese of Pennsylvania was bitterly divided over the issues of war and peace, race and justice,” Reverend Smith said. “Bishop DeWitt was deeply concerned and began to develop strategies to improve communication between the opposing groups. To bridge the gap and promote understanding, the Bishop sent inner-city priests, black as well as white, to visit and preach at suburban churches. The Reverend Paul Washington was among those priests and came to preach at the Church of the Redeemer, an affluent church in Bryn Mawr where I was a member.

“I remember the text of Paul Washington’s sermon,” Reverend Smith told me. “It was from the Gospel of Luke: ‘From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.’

“It was like walking out of the garden,” she said. What Ann Smith meant by that was walking out of a secluded garden, sheltered from the perils of the outside world.

The appearance of Father Washington was an epiphany for her…and for many other suburbanites. Discovering blacks and Jews was a world away from the comfortable white suburbs of the ‘60’s.

In 1971 Bishop DeWitt asked Ann Smith to become the President of the Diocesan Episcopal Churchwomen. At that time, she moved her church affiliation to the Church of the Advocate. Three years later, the first eleven women were ordained Episcopal priests at the Church of the Advocate. It was an action that stirred great controversy and still continues to do so in some places.

When Ann Smith joined the Church of the Advocate, it must have been a shock to her parents. “They were tough times,” she continued, “impossible times. But my husband [Kaighn], God Bless his heart, told me that I should pursue what I cared about.”

She told me that Kaighn was not afraid of what his white colleagues at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania might say or criticize. He was absolutely supportive of her.

And, divinity school loomed in 1984.

“I suddenly recognized that I had to do this [matriculate in divinity school],” she said. “I was 55 years old and terrified. Could I could do the academic work, 35 years after my college days?”

As it turned out, she had nothing to fear.

“I remember my husband asking, ‘What took you so long [to decide to become a priest]?,’ ” she laughed.

The closest seminary was the Lutheran Seminary in Mount Airy, one of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. Later, and after one semester in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was ordained a deacon in 1990. She spent a year of training as a hospital chaplain at Presbyterian Hospital, part of the University of Pennsylvania health system.

After Father Washington retired in 1987, his successor, Father Isaac Miller, needed an assistant.

The rest is history. She served as Father Miller’s assistant rector for ten years before finally retiring. Today, Ann Smith continues to make pastoral calls and serves on the Church of the Advocate’s vestry [a governing council].

She talked about the people who’ve influenced her along her life’s journey. “I’ve been so lucky,” she said. “Mentors and leaders have made a huge impact on me.”

One of them was the Headmistress of the Shipley School from which Ann graduated. “Margaret Bailey (sp?) Spear was teaching in a Beijing, China school when the Japanese invaded just before the Second World War,” Ann said. “Everyone at the school was imprisoned for the war’s duration. But everyone worked together in that prison camp.”

You can understand why Ann’s headmistress was so influential on her students.

Turning back to the Episcopal Church, Ann is delighted that the Presiding Bishop is a woman. “She’s terrific,” Ann said.

That may be true but in the eyes of many Anglicans and the far right of the American Episcopal Church, the presence of female priests is sewing the seeds of discontent and encourages the church to split wide open. Having openly gay priests doesn’t make right wing Episcopalians comfortable either.

What nonsense!

Can you imagine what one of the most tolerant religious leaders in world history would be saying about this divide among Christians? Would Jesus of Nazareth turn his back on women priests or homosexuals? Of course not.

We Americans need more epiphanies.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith