I finally gave in today, and curled up with Forrest Church's last and latest Love & Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow. Not that i was really avoiding the experience; it's just that I was worried that it was all going to hit a little close to home, and I wasn't really certain how I was going to respond. And of course, no surprise, dead center. But why should I be surprised? After all, Forrest and I learned our theology in exactly the same places: at the Harvard Divinity School, and from shared mentors like Rhys Williams, and mutual friends like John Buehrens, to name just a few. Hell, a lot of my theology I learned directly from Forrest himself, as he worked it out in the some twenty-three books he's written and published over three decades of ministry at All Souls NYC, beginning way back in 1982 with his little-known "Born Again Unitarian Universalism." Metaphors like the Cathedral of the World, or the insight that "God is not God's name..." are part of my everyday theological worldview; and I've quoted his observation that "Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die" at just about every memorial service I've conducted in the past 15 years. Close to home? Come on in and pull up a chair; I'll see what's in the fridge.
I started at Harvard in 1978, the same year Forrest graduated and headed off to All Souls, a newly-minted PhD with an M Div in his back pocket. And I also started working as a Field Education student at the First & Second Church in Boston that same autumn, where Forrest had worked as the assistant minister while completing his doctoral studies. So it was hard not to identify with him, and even harder not to admire him -- the young, brilliant, talented, charming son of a Senator who represented so much of what I thought I aspired to be at the time. Especially since I inherited his desk...or at least had a key to the secluded office in the steeple where he sometimes had worked when he happened to be at church.
Oldtimers may recall that there was some irregularity about Forrest's call to New York; he basically went there as a candidate without ever having had his name submitted through the Department of Ministry, or even having seen the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. Rather, Rhys apparently suggested his name directly to the Chair of the Search Committee at All Souls, who followed up with an invitation to an informal, low-key "pre pre-candidating weekend" that eventually led to his formal call. Only years later, in the midst of my own doctoral studies, would I recognize this as just another manifestation of the long-established ecclesiastical relationship between All Souls NYC and the Second Church in Boston. In many ways, the former had started out as something of a "mission" of the latter, and called its first settled minister, William Ware, only after William's older brother Henry (minster of the Second Church) declined a similar invitation himself, and recommended William as an alternative!
But that was a long time ago. And even 30 years seems like the distant past now, as I think back on how far we all have come since 1978. Rhys died of pancreatic cancer in 2003, at the age of 74. Forrest will turn 60 on September 23rd; his esophageal cancer, in remission for the past two years, has now returned but is also responding to treatment, and Forrest writes: "I shall happily renew my lease on life with each new offering sheet." At age 51, I am the youngest of this cadre; and my diagnosis of lung cancer is only four months old. I have no idea how the future course of my disease will run, but like Forrest I too hope for a new lease on life and many long renewals.
In the meantime though, don't go looking to Love & Death for some great new insight into the theology of F. Forrester Church. Rather, go for an easy and comfortable reminder of everything you have loved about Forrest for the past 30 years, and to be reminded that sophisticated theology can still be simple without becoming simple-minded.
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3 comments:
remember we visited forrest in nyc so many years ago? liza
As someone who was in the pews at All Souls during Forrest's earliest ministry there, I often pondered the "irregularities" of his call. They were, in fact, the same old old regularities -- the "old boy network" -- which our extensive fellowship process was designed to fix. Sure, he had all the advantages -- how galling it often seemed! Yet he always strongly applied his assets,making advantages to him seem like some larger service to us,his parishioners and readers.
Sadly, as he counts his days, the ironies of his express elevator still perplex. How fortunate for us all that he was so strongly called to fully use what turned out to be too little time. And yet, what of those who slog through our long, tough process -- including those early "seasoning" years in small or obscure congregations -- just because that's what we do now in pursuit of professional justice.
Thanks, Forrest, for everything. And may you, Tim, be off the long road for a good long settlement at last.
Interesting. I've always sorta seen Forrest's call to All Souls as an example of how the so-called "old boy network" worked exactly the way it is supposed to work -- an expression of a congregation's ecclesiastical right to select its own leader notwithstanding the imposed administrative restrictions of an external bureaucratic authority, and an affirmation of the fundamental relationship between a pastor and their people as the cornerstone of our congregational polity. And, of course, it's easy to forget that All Souls was hardly the "plum" people think of today (after 30 years of Forrest's ministry) when he first arrived there in 1978.
But this could easily become a springboard into a very interesting discussion about the source and nature of ministerial authority, the meaning of vocational "call" and of ministry as "service" (as opposed to a profession or a career), as well as the entire issue of privilege and entitlement in general. Certainly thirty years in harness has got to count for something in a denomination where the median tenure of a minister is now somewhere (I'm told) in the terrible twos. But I'm not going to start that discussion here. Or at least not this morning....
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