Alaska bishop named Canadian National Indigenous Bishop
Episcopal News Service. January 4, 2007 [010407-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Mark L. MacDonald, the seventh Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Alaska, hopes that his new ministry as the Anglican Church of Canada's first National Indigenous Bishop will both transform the way people think about the church and move Anglicans into deeper communion with each other.
Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, announced his appointment of MacDonald at a news conference in the Church's headquarters in Toronto January 4.
MacDonald, 52, becomes a rarity in Anglican tradition -- a bishop who is pastor to a group of people irrespective of where they live, rather than to residents of a geographic diocese. In Canada, only the Bishop Ordinary to the Armed Forces, with pastoral oversight of Anglicans serving in the Armed Forces, is in an analogous position, according to a news release from the Church announcing Hutchison's choice.
In the Episcopal Church, George Packard, the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies, and Pierre Whalon, bishop in charge of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, have similar authority.
As well as crossing Canadian diocesan jurisdictions, MacDonald, in his new position, will straddle national and ecclesiastical boundaries as well. Although he has resigned as Bishop of Alaska, he is due to remain assisting bishop of Navajoland Area Mission with the Episcopal Church.
"It's important to remember that we elect bishops for the church," Hutchison said at the news conference. "We don't elect bishops for national jurisdictions."
MacDonald told ENS after the news conference that "the most important thing to remember is that aboriginal authority and identity is based on a living relationship with the land."
"It is that relationship that is the hallmark of what we might call catholic jurisdiction," he said. "It's that distinction which makes this quite a bit different than simply saying 'well, we'd like to do it better our way' or 'we have an ideological concern we want to give expression to.'"
He said that, while all other parties had signed off on the idea of retaining his Navajoland role, the people in that mission area will be asked soon for their approval. He noted that his move to Toronto will actually put him closer to Navajoland than when he lived in Alaska.
MacDonald and his family often speak Navajo with each other and he said they hold the area as a "close and special place."
He said that, as bishop in Alaska, he'd been involved in "cross-border mission" with the Canadian diocese of the Arctic and the Yukon. When he expressed concern to then-Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold about how such movement between Anglican provinces might look, MacDonald said that Griswold helped him see the distinction between "making this kind of differentiation to deepen communion rather than break it."
"That's been the touchstone for us all along; we hope to be a jurisdiction that is in deeper communion with all parts of the Anglican Communion," MacDonald said. "We hope to be a place of healing and reconciliation."
He said the most important aspect of this new episcopate is that it grew out of a "vision of our elders for many, many, many decades -- a vision born in their living encounter with God through the Gospel and their own values and culture."
"On that level, I would say that it's a prophetic challenge to the whole church," he said. "If we do this as it should be done, we're going to be a spiritual movement and not just the replication of an institution. And if we do that well, it'll be transformation for everybody."
MacDonald said that the people with whom he will be doing ministry "are in the midst of unfolding the aboriginal life, the aboriginal authority, aboriginal reality in an Anglican context."
"What we do know is that we want to have more aboriginal leadership. I think it would be safe to say there's a broad consensus that we would like to have more aboriginal bishops," he said. "How this plays out administratively and ecclesiastically is going to be very interesting. In some respects, it's a post-denominational development."
Other denominations and other native people in other denominations have expressed interest in the idea of an indigenous bishop, he said.
"You have a group of people who are organizing their fellowship around the idea of aboriginal authority and identity," MacDonald said. "It's a powerful thing."
MacDonald said he's been chosen by the council to "midwife this effort" and that there may be many ways in which it is embodied.
"You can't say that you respect aboriginal authority, which is tribal authority, and then impose a solution at a national level," he said. "You have to negotiate and talk and work with people on a tribe-by-tribe, church-by-church, bishop-by-bishop, diocese-by-diocese basis. That's going to be a challenge because people really have to express their authority in this at the local level."
A national indigenous bishop was requested by a national gathering of indigenous Anglicans held in Pinawa, Manitoba, in 2005, according to the Church's release.
Hutchison, who attended that gathering, said at the time that he would do everything he could to fulfill the request, and since then, the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples has conducted an international search for an appropriate candidate. Among the requirements for the position was that the successful candidate be a native person and already a bishop, according to the release.
MacDonald told ENS that while he is not an enrolled member of a tribe, he has ancestral and family history connections to many tribal groups and that he raised the issue with the council during his interviews.
The Anglican Journal reported in August that Hutchison had agreed to appoint the initial candidate whose name would be proposed by the council.
MacDonald, who will be 53 on January 15, was consecrated on September 13, 1997 in Fairbanks, Alaska. Since June 2006, he has also been assisting bishop of the Navajoland Area Mission. The Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops has jurisdiction over mission areas. Bishop Rustin Kimsey, retired bishop of Eastern Oregon, retired as assisting bishop of Navajoland on July 1, 2006.
MacDonald said he will remain a part of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops.
His formal education includes a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies and Psychology from the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota; a Master of Divinity degree from Wycliffe College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and post-graduate work at Luther-Northwestern Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He has held parochial positions in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; Duluth; Tomah and Mauston, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; and the Southeast Regional mission of Navajoland. Immediately prior to his ordination to the episcopate, MacDonald was Canon Missioner for Training in the Diocese of Minnesota and vicar of St. Antipas' Church, Redby, and St. John-in-the-Wilderness Church, Red Lake, Red Lake Nation.
He and his wife, Virginia Sha Lynn, have three children. MacDonald will initially set up his office at the Anglican Church's national office in Toronto, with the possibility of relocation at a later date.
The Canadian church has asked its members to pray for MacDonald's new ministry during worship services on Sunday, January 7, when Anglican congregations will celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, a time when prayers are traditionally offered for the initiation of new ministries.
More biographical information about MacDonald is available here.