Peter Day, 69, Ecumenical Leader
Episcopal News Service. May 10, 1984 [84102]
MILWAUKEE (DPS, May 10) -- Peter Day, the first person to serve as ecumenical officer of the Episcopal Church, died May 5 after suffering with Alzheimer's disease for a number of years.
As ecumenical officer, he assisted the Presiding Bishop and the Executive Council in ecumenical research, dialogues and programs. He was also staff to the General Convention's Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations, which deals with many aspects of Christian Unity. The Commission was then -- and remains -- engaged in a variety of dialogues looking toward unity with groups which include the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Churches, and the Consultation on Church Union. He was also responsible for coordinating the Executive Council's complex relationships with the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.
Upon learning of the death, Presiding Bishop John M. Allin recalled that Day was the son of an Episcopal cleric and noted that: "From his childhood in Episcopal rectories, Peter Day served his Church and his Lord with faith, grace, humor and a keen journalist's eye. His firsthand knowledge of those yeasty postwar years of ecumenical growth gave him a vital understanding of the ultimate unity of the Church and of the obstacles that we humans place in the way of that. I valued that knowledge highly and valued, also, his company when the mission made us traveling companions, as it did on an adventure-filled journey to Russia in the last decade.
"With his colleagues here at the Church Center, I was saddened to learn of the ravages that disease had made on him and his family. He rests now, and is honored in the Church and remembered in our prayers."
He joined the staff of The Living Church, an Episcopal weekly magazine, in 1935 as managing editor, rising over the years to become editor from 1952 until 1964, a period of tremendous ecumenical ferment. He followed and interpreted the ecumenical movement within the broad context of the Episcopal Church's life. In that position, he attended church unity conferences throughout the U.S. and abroad, among them the first World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1939. He also was a delegate to the first Anglican Congress in Minneapolis, Minn., in 1954, and to the second Congress, held in Toronto in 1963.
After becoming ecumenical officer in February, 1964, he served for a time as observer for the Episcopal Church at the Second Vatican Council. In 1968 he served as one of three lay consultants at the Lambeth Conference, the decennial world meeting of Anglican bishops, and as a delegate to the Assembly of the World Council of Churches.
In his home Diocese of Milwaukee, Day has served as chairman of its promotion and Christian social relations departments. The diocese named him a deputy to six General Conventions.
Born in Indiana Harbor, Ind., on August 1, 1914, Day attended school in Muncie, Ind., and St. John's Military Academy, Delafield, Wis. In 1935, he graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College. He also held the honorary degree of LL.D. (Doctor of Laws) from Nashotah House, an Episcopal theological seminary.
During his journalism career in Milwaukee, he also was active in community affairs. He has served as president of the Wisconsin Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers.
His most recent book, Tomorrow's Church: Catholic, Evangelical, Reformed, deals with the effort of nine major churches in the U.S.A. to come together in one Church in the perspective of relationships with other churches, including the Roman Catholics, and the world-wide movement toward Church renewal and unity (Publisher, Seabury Press, New York City, 1969).
He is also author of two other books, Saints on Main Street, published by the Seabury Press in 1960, and Strangers No Longer, published by Morehouse Barlow Co. Both are religious books for the layman. The first deals with the relation of personal religion to Christian service, while the second explores the theological aspects of Christian unity.
He is survived by his wife, Lorraine, copy editor of the Living Church, and by two children.