Browning Challenge: Model Selfless Giving
Episcopal News Service. March 4, 1988 [88033]
GUATEMALA CITY (DPS, March 3) -- Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning has called upon the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church to lead the Church toward a model in which half its resources would be used for causes beyond institutional support.
Speaking here on Feb. 26 at the close of an historic meeting of the Council, Browning reached 150 years back in history -- and one week back, as well -- to lift up examples of a challenge that seems likely to form a strong element of his decade-long primacy: nothing less than the conversion of an institutional church into a mission church.
"You and I", he reminded the Council, "have put forward as the mission imperatives of our Church not only those of justice and peace but also those of witness and stewardship. These imperatives not only call Episcopalians to effective witness for Christ as evangelists and missionaries, not only to global humanitarian outreach, but also to share the resources necessary to make this mission possible. The stories of outreach that we tell must be specific in identifying the appropriate response. We dare not ignite merely moral indignation. We must evoke true Christian stewardship. We must prepare the way for generous, 'thank-filled' giving."
Browning set his message in the immediate context of the first meeting of the Council outside the continental United States, a meeting that had been preceded by visits of Council members and staff to all the dioceses of the Church's Province IX and to those extra-provincial dioceses that had been spun off from the Church. From that experience he said, " I believe that, if we model the radical self-giving of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will lead us to more."
Browning went on to report: "We have witnessed our church's mission and ministry in Latin America. We have visited congregations that meet regularly in people's homes. We have toured church facilities which serve as both places of worship and community centers for education, medical care, and occupational training. This is true self-giving and should be a model to us all. We must find ways to support the mission and ministry in Latin America and affirm its aspirations. But, more than that, we need to carry this witness home to every diocese and parish in the United States and across the Anglican Communion."
But the chief pastor and primate of the 2.9 million member Church had a still broader context in mind. He detailed at length the journeys and stark writings of the 19th Century philanthropist and reformer Dorothea Dix -- a body of work that was the principle factor in Massachusetts' pioneering reforms of treatment and humane care for the insane.
In an address that he dedicated to Janette Pierce, the managing editor of the Episcopalian and a much-loved social activist in the Church who died unexpectedly in January, he celebrated the role of women in shaping the "humanitarian heritage of the United States."
"Dorothea Dix is one of the great women who brought humanitarian reform to American society. Along with Emma Willard, Elizabeth Blackwell and Mary McCloud Bethune in the area of education; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Susan B. Anthony in the area of women's rights; Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman in the abolition of slavery; and Clara Barton in the area of organizing relief from disasters and the care of the wounded on the battlefield, Dorothea Dix and these other heroic women helped make American society more humane by their reforming crusades. And, in each case, these great women brought about the necessary reform of society by bringing the voices of the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten to the compassionate and just eye of our conscience. These women, and their sisters, are the founding mothers of our nation's humanitarian heritage.
Laying the ground for his confident assertion that the Church is capable of vigorous, enthusiastic response and outreach, Browning stated: "The memorial of Dorothea Dix...was a surrogate of conscience. As with all reformers, Miss Dix awakened the conscience of her contemporaries through the stories she told. She helped them to examine their consciences and act on the moral viewpoints they already possessed.... We know what actions the imperatives of our moral vision demand of us. What will awaken our conscience for such as the homeless and those persons living with AIDS?"
Browning's specific challenge was in two parts: "the development of stewardship on every level that has as its goal the vision of 50/50 giving; and, second, the establishment of a process and structure for raising funds for new mission initiatives."
He told the Council that this vision of stewardship was not designed to "make the Episcopal Church the world's best social service agency. We are seeking to come a bit closer to the radical self-giving of Jesus Christ. At best, we will still be far away from the thankful self-giving to which we are called."
"In addressing the Board of the Presiding Bishop's Fund last Fall, I suggested that the time had come to expand and strengthen the vision of the Fund. I suggested that 'While retaining the commitment and flexibility to respond to humanitarian relief around the world...the Fund must more actively and forcefully demonstrate the capacity to organize itself to meet the emerging needs of the Church and society, for examples in supporting the ministry to persons living with AIDS and in easing the plight of the homeless, both at home and abroad.' I made it clear that the Fund must be one of the clearest signs of the compassionate leadership of our Church. The Fund must incarnate the compassion that abounds in our Church, tapping into the deep well of loving concern and outreach that is one of the great marks of our Church.
Moving into the second part of the vision, he reminded the Council of his appointment -- to be effective in the fall -- of Bishop Furman Stough of Alabama as deputy for the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief and senior executive for mission planning.
A vital portion of Stough's work will be to serve as the focal point for the major funding agencies of the Church.
"Over the past two years, I have seen many, many more areas for mission response both in the United States and abroad -- opportunities for evangelism, for development, and for meeting basic human needs. It is my deep prayer that we can challenge Episcopalians to expanded thankful giving and radically increase our annual financial resources to meet emerging mission opportunities and initiatives. Through effective communication of the story of the people in need and those with whom we are in partnership for mission, through creative fund-raising techniques, through efficient and sensitive management, and through a leadership dedicated to the ministry of servanthood, we can achieve our goal."
Browning closed with a return to his early theme: "It is often the little people who move great and historic events. They do so by being the surrogates of conscience. And they do it by modeling the radical self giving of Jesus Christ. Pray with me, sisters and brothers, that we too, can fulfill the great mission of the Church as surrogates of conscience and the instruments of active self-giving response."