- Shawn Lowe, 49, of western Pennsylvania, has been elected the youngest leader in the history of the Episcopal Church.
- Rowe said the church needs to address an “existential crisis” comparable to the collapse of the steel industry in the Rust Belt.
- He will succeed Bishop Michael Curry as senior pastor, president and chief executive officer of the Anglican Church in November.
Bishop Sean Rowe, a 49-year-old from western Pennsylvania, on Wednesday became the youngest person ever elected to lead the Episcopal Church.
He immediately issued a stern call for the church, facing division and chronic membership loss, to confront an “existential crisis” that he compared to the collapse of the steel industry in his own Rust Belt homeland.
Rowe, who leads two small parishes along Lake Erie, will take over from Bishop Michael Curry, the first African-American to hold the position, when his nine-year term ends Nov. 1. The bishop serves as the denomination’s senior pastor, president and chief executive officer.
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Rowe was elected in the first vote of the synod, which met behind closed doors at the Episcopal Cathedral in Louisville on Wednesday. Rowe received 89 votes, the majority needed, with the rest of the votes widely spread among the other four candidates.
This image provided by the Episcopal Church shows Bishop Sean Rowe of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania in an official church photograph for 2024. Bishop Rowe, 49, a native of Western Pennsylvania, became the youngest person ever elected to lead the Episcopal Church on Wednesday. (The Episcopal Church via The Associated Press)
The lower house, made up of clergy and laity, approved his election with 95 percent of the vote to thunderous applause.
The only bishop to have held the episcopate at a younger age than Rowe was the first Bishop, William White, who was 41 when he served briefly in 1789, when there was no leadership election.
Rowe was 32 when he was elected bishop of the Erie-based Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania in May 2007. For nearly 12 years, he was the youngest bishop in the Episcopal Church.
Christian groups believe they need to change their approach to address the historic decline in American church attendance.
In 2019, he also began overseeing the Buffalo-based Diocese of Western New York. The two parishes, which have a combined membership of fewer than 10,000, have collaborated in ministries in recent years.
He said such cooperation is just one example of the church’s need to adapt to new realities.
“It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing an existential crisis,” Rowe told the House of Commons after the election. “This is not because the church is declining, or because we have lost faith in God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, but because the world around us has changed, and continues to change. The world is always changing, and God is calling us ever deeper into the unknown.”
The Episcopal Church is an offshoot of the Church of England in the United States and has been the spiritual home of many of America’s Founding Fathers and Presidents.
But like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Anglican Church’s membership has been declining for decades. After peaking at 3.4 million in 1959, it fell to 1.9 million when Curry was elected leader in 2015, and to fewer than 1.6 million by 2022. Average Sunday attendance among Anglican believers nationwide fell from 614,241 in 2015 to 372,952 by 2022.
Rowe likened the problems facing the church to the collapse of the steel industry, where his grandparents worked when he was growing up in Pennsylvania.
“I’ve watched the things I love disappear,” he says. “I’ve watched everything I knew disappear.”
He referred to tensions within the denomination but did not provide details, and called on believers to be more tolerant and tolerant of one another. He also urged believers to “direct their anger towards injustice rather than towards one another.”
Still, he quoted Thomas Merton, the late Catholic monk and author who was popular in Kentucky, where the tournament is held, to encourage people to move forward in faith despite uncertainty.
“You don’t need to know exactly what’s going on to face challenges with courage, faith and hope,” he said.
In practical terms, Rowe called for the church to eschew top-heavy structures and direct more money and resources to local and parish ministries.
A native of Sharon, Pennsylvania, Rowe graduated from nearby Grove City College in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in history.
He graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary in 2000 and then returned to western Pennsylvania.
Bishop Schneider is known for his research and work on organizational learning and adaptive performance in the church. He received his PhD in Organizational Learning and Leadership from Gannon University in Erie in 2014.
After the election, Mr. Curry spoke to reporters and praised his successor, saying Mr. Rowe had both “a vision and a sense for the mechanisms that will help us get there.”
In his opening remarks at the General Assembly on Sunday, Curry urged delegates to remain optimistic.
“This Episcopal Church is stronger, more durable and has a God-ordained, God-conceived future,” he said. “Don’t worry about this church. Don’t cry or lament. Just roll up your sleeves and get to work. That’s our future.”
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Throughout his ministry, Rev. Curry has been outspoken on a variety of tough issues, including racial reconciliation, climate change, immigration policy, and LGBTQ+ equality. Some of his favorite causes include founding an ecumenical summer camp for children, building a network of daycare providers, and encouraging large-scale investment in urban areas.
In 2018, he became a global star with his inspirational, widely televised sermon at the wedding of Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Curry, 71, has been battling a variety of health issues since he was hospitalized in May 2023 to treat internal bleeding and an irregular heartbeat. In March, doctors successfully performed pacemaker surgery on him as part of his continuing treatment.
