LOS ANGELES: Bishops Talton and Carranza set to retire in 2010
Episcopal News Service. December 9, 2008 [120908-01]
Pat McCaughan
Bishop J. Jon Bruno, at the 113th annual convention meeting of the Diocese of Los Angeles on December 5, anounced the planned June 2010 retirements of both Bishop Suffragan Chester Talton and Bishop Assistant Sergio Carranza.
"Today I call for the election of two bishops suffragan and for this election to occur next December during the 114th annual meeting of this Convention," Bruno told about 1,000 delegates meeting at the Riverside Convention Center.
"To this end, I will make the necessary request of the Presiding Bishop, the House of Bishops, and the Standing Committees to authorize this election, and as early as possible in the new year I will announce the names of those persons who agree to serve on a search and nominating committee," he said.
That same evening, convention delegates honored Bishop Assistant Bob Anderson, who is retiring after 12 years of ministry in the Los Angeles diocese.
Anderson: one of Communion's longest-serving active bishops
Anderson was 42 and the youngest bishop in the Episcopal Church (TEC) when elected to head the Diocese of Minnesota in 1977; he remains one of the Anglican Communion's longest-serving active bishops.
An emphasis on the baptismal covenant and the work of reconciliation were key to his 47-year ministry, he has said. A deep and abiding spirituality informed his episcopacy, forged through groundbreaking Native American ministry, deployment of women rectors, gay and lesbian clergy, creation of the Episcopal House of Prayer and the establishment of safe church guidelines.
Sally Johnson, Church Pension Group Vice-President for Risk Management and Education, who served as Anderson's vice-chancellor and later as chancellor, says under his guidance the Diocese of Minnesota became "probably the first denomination to make a concerted effort to comply with statutory background screening" for clergy.
He also serves as a faculty member of CREDO, or Clergy Renewal and Educational Discernment Opportunity, and guided congregations and clergy through Natural Church Development and Fresh Start programs for clergy in transition.
Born in Staten Island, New York, he attended Colgate University and Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. He received a Danforth fellowship, named for the family of former U.S. Sen. John Danforth (R-Missouri), that enabled him to serve as college chaplain for a year at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he met Minneapolis native Mary Evans, whom he married a year later.
Prior to coming to Los Angeles, he served as curate and later as associate rector at St. John's Church, Stamford. He also served two yoked mission congregations, Christ Church, Middle Haddam, and St. John's, East Hampton, and was dean of St. Mark's Cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, before being elected Bishop of Minnesota in October, 1977.
Talton was active in cultural diversity and congregational development
Talton was elected fifth suffragan bishop of Los Angeles' in 1990 and has made congregational development and cultural diversity priorities throughout his 19-year tenure. Active in the House of Bishops, he served in the 2006-2009 triennium on the Joint Standing Committee on Nominations and nationally in the Union of Black Episcopalians.
A 1970 graduate of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, he has served congregations in California, Minnesota and New York. Prior to Los Angeles, he was rector of St. Philip's Church in Harlem. In New York, he also served as mission officer on the clergy staff of Trinity Wall Street.
He was serving as rector of St. Philip's Church in St. Paul, Minnesota when Anderson was elected diocesan bishop. He has also served as vicar at Holy Cross Church in Chicago, Illinois; curate at All Saints Church in Carmel, California and vicar of Good Shepherd Church in Berkeley.
Born in El Dorado, Arizona, he received a bachelor of science degree from California State University at Hayward in 1965. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1971 in the San Francisco-based Diocese of California. He married April Grayson in 2007. He was previously widowed, and has four children and several grandchildren.
Carranza: ardent supporter of ecumenical and equal rights issues
Bishop Assistant Sergio Carranza-Gomez, former Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Mexico, has served since 2003 as Bishop Assistant of the Diocese of Los Angeles.
He is a graduate of the Virginia Theological Seminary, and throughout his tenure has been active in ecumenical and inter-religious concerns and has been an outspoken advocate for equality.
Born in Mexico City in 1941, Bishop Carranza was ordained Bishop of the Diocese of Mexico after serving 16 years as rector of St. George's Church (la Parroquia de San Jorge) in Mexico City. He was previously vicar of Holy Family Church (La Sagrada Familia) in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and rector of St. Andrew's Seminary (Seminario de San Andres) from 1970 to 1973. He was a professor at the seminary for 17 years.
From 1968 to 1987, Carranza was first chancellor and then secretary general of the Ninth Province of the Episcopal Church (a region spanning Mexico, northern South America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean). Thereafter, the Anglican Church in Mexico became an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion, dividing in 1995 from the Episcopal Church in the United States.
During his episcopate, Bishop Carranza has been a respected member of the U. S. House of Bishops and the Mexican College of Bishops, and a key participant in the 1998 Lambeth Conference. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary.
Bishop Diocesan Jon Bruno reassured convention delegates that, despite the changes, "we remain committed to the core values that guide us in collaborative ministry as your bishops at this time."