His Quiet, Tough Advice

As I wandered through the exhibition hall at the Episcopal Church's triennial General Convention in Anaheim, California, September, I was struck by how many of the old familiar faces were missing. A sign of aging and a signal I've attended too many of these since my first in 1970, I thought.

I missed the retired and otherwise engaged—Henry Rightor, Paul Washington, Muhammad Kenyatta. But mostly I missed the dead—Pauli Murray, Denzil Carty, Marion Lelleran. Most of all I missed Bill Stringfellow, for it was in the context of solemn assemblies and attendant late-night strategy conclaves in interchangeable hotel rooms across the country that I knew him best.

Bill was of course famous in Episcopal circles and on the lecture circuit from his East Harlem days in the late '50s and early '60s. I never met him then and viewed him somewhat the way I viewed C.S. Lewis—as an enthusiasm of my co-religionists that I couldn't get very excited about. Bill's circle did not include many women, and I assumed, erroneously as it turned out, he would have little interest in the women's movement.

I did not meet Bill until after the "irregular" ordination of 11 women in Philadelphia in July 1974. He was not at our ordination, though one of the bishops had asked him to stand by in case legal help was needed. He was fogged in at his home on Block Island. However, he did get to the House of Bishops meeting in Chicago two weeks later when the bishops declared no ordination had taken place in July. It was after that fateful and ill-advised declaration that we sat down for our first hotel-room strategy session.

Bill knew more about the Episcopal bishops and how they interacted than anyone else in the church, including the bishops themselves. Episcopal bishops fascinated him. He'd written at length about them in his two books on Bishop James Pike. He respected the episcopate and wanted desperately to see the men in it lead the church courageously and competently.

That they constantly disappointed him in this regard seemed to be an ever-renewed spark for his own prophetic utterances. When bishops engaged in racist, sexist, or homophobic behavior, Bill seemed especially hurt and offended as though they, of all people, should know better and act in a more exemplary way.

But he didn't limit himself to telling them so, though he certainly did that in his books and in the pages of The Witness magazine. He knew how they functioned as a body and was a master strategist and lobbyist of their meetings. I was privileged to see him at work on the House of Bishops around two issues and to know that his quiet, tough advice had made them behave better than they otherwise would have.

The first issue was the recognition, at the General Convention in Minneapolis in 1976, of the now 15 irregularly ordained women without requiring re-ordination (after the Philadelphia ordinations in 1974, four more women were ordained in 1975 in Washington, D.C.). The second was addressing the ordination of homosexuals at the interim meeting of the bishops in Florida in 1977.

In neither case did the bishops behave as Bill would have wished—with vision and magnanimity. But in both cases they behaved in less reactionary ways than they at first appeared to be inclined to do. Bill's quiet but effective lobbying behind the scenes made the difference. Because Bill has died, I'll never know exactly what sort of hardball he played, but, as an observer of the situation, I certainly know Bill Stringfellow's influence made an enormous difference on both issues.

Bill was an uncompromising enemy of racism, sexism, and homophobia in the church. In the Episcopal Church, his writings have been influential, but his presence as strategist, lobbyist, and theological resource to the bishops in particular was where his influence was most powerfully felt. His brilliance and wit made him both feared and revered in the halls of the General Convention. He was sorely missed in Anaheim. His lucid, simple prose remains, but never again will we be treated to his flashing eyes and acid tongue in those hotel-room sessions stretching late into the night.

Suzanne R. Hiatt was an ordained priest and professor of pastoral theology at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the time this article appeared.