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The Heavenly Twins' Move Themselves to Back Burner

Diocesan Press Service. May 28, 1975 [75200]

ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. -- Helen Shoemaker and Polly Wiley, founders and co-directors of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer, made history as they formally placed that organization in the capable and inspired care of its new Executive Director, the Rev. Donald M. Hultstrand, when 450 members of the international fellowship met for the seventeenth annual conference April 30 to May 2 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

At the opening dinner, Mrs. Shoemaker and Mrs. Wiley were the stars of a comic dialogue which "brought down the house " and at the same time gave a striking account of the profound effect prayer has had upon the recent history of the Episcopal Church.

Helen Shoemaker and Polly Wiley were members of a small group of women who met in New York City during the dark days of World War II to explore the practice of prayer. It was a time when many people discovered that they had forgotten how to pray.

Little by little, after trials and errors, through prayer, experiment and love, these women found themselves blessed. They studied the Bible. They discussed, meditated, and interceded. They listened to God and to each other. News of them leaked out and touched a long-submerged, urgent need for nurture in the life of prayer. The original group became the " mother " to a rapidly expanding network of prayer and study groups throughout the Diocese of New York and far beyond.

In 1958, the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer was formed to give the ministry of prayer needed coherence and direction. The work of the "AFP " has undergirded and guided not only the great councils of the Church, but also the faith and practice of millions of Christians.

Mrs. Shoemaker and Mrs. Wiley recalled the AFP's world-wide call for prayer in its letter to the Anglican bishops at Lambeth. They told how, amid threats of schism in the Church in the tumultuous 1960's, prayer dispelled hostilities and made it possible for opposing factions to live together in love. They quoted Bishop Allen W. Brown who said, "God seemed to be asking our fellowship to be a small, insistent voice calling the Church to return to her true mission -- making Christ her center. A remarkable change has come about in Christian life everywhere. Prayer, worship, and the Power of the Risen Christ are at the center of a great hunger for renewal. What the Fellowship has had to offer is now eagerly sought. "

"Now," said Mrs. Shoemaker and Mrs. Wiley, "it is time for us to move ourselves to the back burner of the stove. "

Fr. Hulstrand, in picking up the reins of AFP, responded by saying, "Only God could give one man the courage to stand in the shoes of two such women." The 48-year old Minnesota priest has been Chairman of the International Committee of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer since 1970. He served parishes in the states of Minnesota, Ohio, and Missouri before becoming rector of St. Paul's Church in Duluth in 1969. He will resign from that post September 1 to undertake fulltime work as AFP's Executive Director.

"I am honored and awed to be taking over this work, because I am convinced that God has a great mission for AFP in our time . . . to be a uniting force for the Church, to create a conscious climate of prayer, to marshal forces of prayer that are waiting to be tapped, to be a leader in a person by person conversion to a life of prayer.

"As we pray, the Church will be drawn to its central purpose to be a people in union with God. The Church has many missions -- social action, education, fellowship, evangelism -- but none of these will be God's work unless they begin with God's inspiration and continue in the guidance of His Holy Spirit. The Church will be alive and well where people are praying. "

Special guests of the conference were the Rt. Rev. David K. Leighton, Bishop of Maryland, who spoke of "Shalom, the harmony of body and mind and spirit, into which God brings our human nature;" and the Rt. Rev. James W. Montgomery, Bishop of Chicago, who delivered three meditations on prayer as the road to strength and renewal.

"Modern man is standing on a watershed. We must not give up our rational pursuits, but we must show forth the transcendence of God in mystery, worship, and prayer." The Rt. Rev. Albert W. Van Duzer, Bishop of New Jersey, was host to the Conference which was held at Ascension Church and at the Haddon Hall Hotel in Atlantic City. Bishop Van Duzer closed the Conference with the warning, "Years from now as mortals struggle here below, the heavenly twins, Helen Shoemaker and Polly Wiley, will be above with their harps tucked under their arms, looking below and still meddling with the work of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer! "