Presiding Bishop’s keynote address to Episcopal schools groupPosted Nov 21, 2014 |
National Association of Episcopal Schools 50th Anniversary Celebration
Who are we, whence, whither, and why?
21 November 2014
Santa Ana, California
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
Happy anniversary! How does it feel to be middle-aged? You haven’t yet made it to proto-geezerhood, which I’m told begins at 55. There is a real gift in being purveyors of education for the young. It’s an eternal and persistent encouragement not to take ourselves too seriously, or as my husband puts it, not to be too “adultish.” If this organization continues to be what it proclaims, those who are served by Episcopal schools will help all your members to keep returning to the growing and learning and renewing phases of the life cycle.
At the same time, the tradition and ethos that is “Episcopal” lends wisdom and gravitas to this endeavor. That should keep this organization and its members steady in the winds of change, faithful to a course set long ago, and still willing to explore contexts where it hasn’t been before. There is a tension between those two, and that very tension is essential to this work.
I’m going to try to explore some of that course we’re on, the vector or trajectory of this work of Episcopal education, its originating genius, what it’s becoming in this age, and where it might be going in the future.
I used the word wisdom as one of the guiding characteristics of this particular educational mission. Wisdom, in the deep sense of “what it means to live a good life,” underlies this Episcopal education enterprise. Schools of wisdom have their roots in the mists of time, as parents and elders sought to equip the young of their tribes for a life that was hard and short, yet also shot through with the grace and beauty that can be seen in the cave paintings of Lascaux or the elaborate and tender burials of Egypt or the Andes. Wisdom transcends a single life, and wisdom partakes of what transcends us all – which is why it (or she) is so often personified as divine – as Sofia, Athena, Hokmah, or Saraswati.
Schools of wisdom describe some of the early responses to the desire of religious communities to teach new generations right ways of living, fruit discovered and harvested over generations. Some looked like campfire story-telling (think of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness), some like monasteries, and some like what have become yeshivas and madrassas, or the etymologically linked midrash of rabbinic Judaism.
Episcopal schools have their roots in the same tensor field of teaching and getting wisdom, particularly in ways that encourage all members of the community to live beyond themselves, to live larger, for the sake of others. This ethos is about expanding life and its possibilities beyond self-centeredness, beyond ‘live hard and die young,’ or a beautiful corpse, or “he who dies with the most toys wins.” In recent times this endeavor has been a transcendent response to educational programs (more accurately called “training”) that seek primarily to shape worker bees for a larger social system. The caricature of Brave New World[1] comes readily to mind, but we frequently hear the lament of political and business interests about schools who don’t equip students to “work in the real world.”[2] The wisdom teacher will grant that as a minimalist starting point, but will not cease until there is a far deeper and broader perspective of the value and place of each human life, and the responsibility to see oneself as part of a larger and interconnected whole.
Church schools have existed from very early days, but primarily as academies for monastics and those seeking to serve the church, which often meant political service as well as parish ministry. Latin grammar schools, intended to train scribes and lawyers as well as ecclesiastics and government functionaries, date from the Middle Ages, and with the European Renaissance began to expand their educational scope to the humanities.
The Reformation laid the foundation for universal literacy, by expecting that the faithful should be able to worship in a language they understood. Scripture was translated into local languages, and available for personal inspection. Especially in England, the Book of Common Prayer made access to worship materials fully available to all who could read.
That was revolutionary in a society and time when only the upper classes were generally sufficiently educated to read and write, and it began a slow expansion in popular access to education. King Edward VI established a network of free grammar schools in the mid 16th century, but relatively few attended, because especially for the poor, physical labor was more immediate to survival than book learning.
It was not until the late 18th century that a push for universal education began, and it came from members of the established church. In 1780 the Sunday School movement began to offer basic education on the one day when children were free from factory labor, and within 50 years those schools were educating a quarter of the population.[3] In 1811 the National Society was founded to push for public schools with curricula grounded in religious education. [4] Within 40 years there were more than 17,000 Church of England schools. A compulsory national system didn’t come into existence until 1870, yet it continued to permit and encourage cooperation between church and state.
Episcopal schools in this country, and more broadly around the world, have similar roots in contemporary religious initiatives to educate the poor, provide opportunities for expanded life possibilities, and engender a more enlightened and democratic social environment. Thomas Bray arrived in the American colonies in 1700 to assess the state of the church, and returned to England focused on improving Christian education here. The SPCK[5] which he helped found went on to foster educational efforts across the world.
Church grammar and secondary schools were founded here during the colonial period included, including the Academy of Philadelphia (1751), which eventually became the University of Pennsylvania. In 1693 William and Mary was the first Anglican institution of higher education established in America; King’s College, New York, followed in 1754, later taking the name of Columbia University. Both were broadly based, seeking to educate men without regard to their religious affiliation. Notably, no Anglican divinity schools were founded in the colonies, as those who aspired to the ministry had to travel to England to be ordained. The first one wasn’t established until 1817, as the General Seminary in NYC.
The Sunday school movement began in the United States soon after the Revolution, and grew in scope along with the nation. Here, too, it eventually helped produce universal national education, also beginning in the 1870s. The Chautauqua Institution was an outgrowth, designed to broaden the education of Sunday School teachers themselves. There has been a frequent pattern of lower schools leading to higher levels of education. Once people discover the joy of learning, they rarely want to stop!
Episcopal schools also have roots in the vast missionary work of the Anglican Communion that began in earnest in the 19th century. Missions were established in far-flung parts of the globe, by the SPCK and other mission societies,[6] and almost universally their service focused on education and health care. Both were understood as ways of evangelism, though in the Anglican tradition, not always or even usually with the intent of conversion. A number of those schools have become major educational centers, contributing an outsize portion of a nation’s leadership – in the same way that colonial religious foundations in this country (Yale, Harvard, Penn, Princeton) have done. There are several notable examples: Cuttington University in Liberia, the first in West Africa; Rikkyo University in Japan; St. John’s in Shanghai, which moved to Taiwan; and Trinity University in Manila.
That is a quick and broad swipe at a history of education as mission in the Anglican tradition, but it represents the diverse body of roots that undergird this particular form of wisdom education. This pattern of education has sought to expand the horizons for students of all ages, out of a deep conviction that each human being is particularly gifted, of transcendent value, and a potential contributor to God’s dream for a just and peaceful world.
There is another network of roots that bears further exploration because it continues to shape the generous ethos of Episcopal education.
Christianity likely came to the British Isles with Roman soldiers in the second century CE. When the Romans left around 410, this religious tradition remained, to develop and grow in ways that diverged from the stream that continued from a center in Rome. Celtic Christianity flourished in conversation with an indigenous spirituality that revered the natural world and saw marks of the divine in every part of life. That extended to a primary perception of human beings as created good, rather than inherently evil. It is grounded in the first creation story of Genesis, yet understands the truth of the second. It is certainly a tension, but this strand of Christian thought occupies a place toward one end of the spectrum, and has something to do with the generous and comprehensive ethos of its Anglican offspring.
Celtic spirituality discerns blessing and wards off evil by invoking the presence of the good and holy. Over the centuries, Celtic Christianity developed diverse contextual habits – of practice, liturgy, and theology – without an urgent need to tidy them into one fixed system. What was good and creative in a community and its traditions was blessed, and seen as part of the local creative potential for larger blessing. The monastic tradition of the islands held a strong educational charism, with each monastic house largely governing its own affairs. Some of those monastic foundations were led by men, some by women, and sometimes they existed together. Women’s leadership was recognized and affirmed. There is a perduring local character to Anglicanism as it has developed globally, with each “house” or provincial church governing its own affairs while taking periodic counsel with others. It is something of a bottom-up kind of management, rather than top-down hierarchy, even though strands have always yearned for central control. That diversity makes governing and change messy, yet in an organic sense it’s a great deal more like the way all creatures and communities grow and develop.
That diversity has something to do with the claim of Anglicanism to be a broad and generous tradition, a middle way between Roman Catholicism and more reformed Protestant traditions. The Elizabethan settlement that gave rise to the modern shape of the Church of England affirmed an institutional will to tolerate variety. That ideal has never been uniformly or perfectly upheld, but it remains a core aspiration.
The ability to see diversity as a blessing to be celebrated, rather than a curse to be expunged or denied, is central to the ethos of Episcopal education. It is one of the fundamental reasons why people of other religious traditions, and none, seek out Episcopal schools. That core value leads to some other concrete realities – a desire for shared leadership, and a willingness to affirm the gifts of all, without regard to gender, race, creed, or what appear to some to be physical or psychosocial handicaps. It is expressed in a theological tenet often referred to as ‘baptismal ministry,’ that encourages every member of the church, not just the ordained, to see their daily lives as acts of Christian service, for the healing of the world. In an Episcopal school, that translates into becoming a community of wisdom that prepares its members for effective and transformative lives of service in the world.
The developmental history of universal education in the Anglican and American environments is a testimony to the creative tension between a state or (quasi-)established church and its mission to see that all members of society can develop and use the gifts with which they’ve been created – for the betterment of society and the world.
The same ethos has led the worship centers of this tradition – cathedrals or major urban churches – to understand themselves as servants of the larger community, often proclaiming that they are to be a ‘house of prayer for all people.’ That phrase is actually a prophetic claim of Isaiah, speaking about the (Jewish) Temple in Jerusalem.[7] Indeed, the Washington National Cathedral,[8] an Episcopal institution, last week hosted a Muslim community for Friday prayers for the first time.[9] The cathedral in Boston does it regularly.
We’ve looked at Episcopal schools as teachers and tradents of wisdom, with roots that go back into prehistory, as well as in more recent religious forms – yeshiva, monastery, and madrassa, and particularly in western Anglican and Celtic mission in tribal, national, and international contexts. We’ve noted some of the peculiar characteristics of Episcopal education – its generous comprehensiveness, patience with ambiguity, and a search for wisdom, grounded in a deep and abiding belief in the goodness and creativity of the world.
These charisms are particularly suited to life in a globalizing and interconnected world. Episcopal schools that share these gifts and ethos are urgently needed to form thoughtful and compassionate leaders for this planet, all its inhabitants, and its future. Daily we meet a world of religious and political strife, where misunderstanding and a lack of curiosity about difference lend fuel to wars and violence. That narrow view is a crippling sort of poverty that smothers creativity. It’s the sort of stunted approach to the world’s challenges that led a recent NYT editorial writer to say about global hunger, “don’t ask how we’re going to feed 9 billion people, ask how we’re going to end poverty.”[10]
Episcopal education is about the big picture. That long, funny word, as Dan Heischman has it,[11] doesn’t just mean it’s about bishops. It means overseeing, climbing up the hill in a strategic sense to see the whole landscape, and not only the immediate and very local context. It is about comprehension and inclusiveness; it’s an orientation toward the whole body rather than only one part. That fundamental given is why you gather students from so many different faith traditions and none, why you look for students from varied social locations, why Episcopal schools so often draw international students, why they increasingly seek to be more diverse than the communities in which they’re set.
There’s an aspect of this that leads me to challenge you about the name – the National Association of Episcopal Schools. Your members or potential members are spread across the globe, part of that legacy of 19th and 20th century missionaries who went and started schools in China, Jordan, and Haiti, and even farther afield. The Diocese of Haiti today has 254 schools that educate some 80,000 students, from preschool to University. It is a large fraction of the whole nation’s educational apparatus. The schools in the Diocese of Jerusalem educate far more Muslim children than Christians, and all are brought up with a deep awareness of their common religious roots that call them to work for peace everywhere. Shalom, salaam, and Islam all stem from the same Semitic root for peace.
How might the NAES broaden its perspective beyond the borders of the United States, and increase the capacity of its schools to form global leaders? The Brent School in the Philippines[12] was the first coeducational boarding school in East Asia, and today it continues to form global leaders. Hogar Escuela in Costa Rica[13] teaches the children of mostly single, immigrant mothers in one of the poorest communities in San José. Their work is much like the schools represented in the USA in the Urban School Alliance, and I wonder what might result from some creative interchange. Most of the community ministry in the Diocese of Taiwan involves bilingual kindergartens, and like nearly all Episcopal schools, they serve a broad diversity of children and faith traditions. One of them has a remarkable mesh enclosure, which surrounds much of the building to contain a living butterfly garden, where children learn something about ecosystems and life cycles in the dense urban center of Taichung.[14]
Our world urgently needs that sort of ecosystem approach, writ large. The ability to see and value the interconnections between people in vastly different contexts, as well as with the whole of this planetary system (and beyond it), is intrinsic to building a world where all might live in peace with justice.
Episcopal schools will never be able to educate all children, but they fill an outsize leadership role that transforms students, communities, and nations. The shrinking public commitment to educational excellence across this nation is a travesty of justice, which is slowly being addressed in places like South Carolina[15] and on Native American reservations,[16] but the gap is enormous. The advocacy of those who know the difference a school like yours can make, for its students and their communities, is essential. You could be – and I think are – building partnerships with public schools that in small ways begin to bridge the chasm. How might you build larger and more public advocacy initiatives that could engender profound generational and societal change? Parents and alumni are perhaps the most obvious potential players. I would challenge you to think strategically about how to share the gifts you have more broadly. You could be a catalyst for transformative change in the whole educational system in this country and beyond.
Schools of wisdom are about transformation – from self-centeredness to acting on behalf of the whole community. Wisdom values the particular gifts and ultimate dignity of each person and context and at the same time understands the intrinsically creative gift of diversity. Wisdom does not believe in a zero-sum game. Wisdom moves beyond the truth of “Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite,” to the truth of “we are all God’s favored, blessed offspring” and that all are meant to be co-creators of a world that lives that way of truth. Wisdom doesn’t believe in beautiful corpses or garages bursting with toys; it does believe in a life well and fully lived for others. Edna St. Vincent Millay put it this way, “My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night, but ah my foes, and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light.”[17] The truth is that the candles of many wise ones, together, can and will drive back the night.
Keep on getting wisdom, and you will continue to light and bless this world!
[1] Aldous Huxley, 1931
[2] http://www.reviewjournal.com/life/technology/report-grow-tech-jobs-vegas-improve-advanced-education re failures in STEM education because it’s geared to 30-year old electronic platforms used by the gaming industry!
[3] Led by the Anglican Robert Raikes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes
[4]National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church
[5] The Society for the Propagation of the Christian Gospel began in 1698
[6] Especially the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), the Society for Missions in Africa and the East (Church Mission Society, CMS), and the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA).
[7] Isaiah 56:7
[8] Properly called the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St Paul
[9] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/11/national-cathedral-muslim-prayer_n_6136222.html
[10] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/dont-ask-how-to-feed-the-9-billion.html
[11] What Schools Teach Us About Religious Life, Peter Lang, 2014.
[12] http://www.brentbaguio.edu.ph/v2/home/2013-06-08-12-15-51
[13] https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2013/08/21/north-carolina-group-explores-partnership-in-costa-rica/
[14] http://www.episcopalpgh.org/bishopsblog/thursday-at-the-house-of-bishops-meeting-in-taiwan/
[15] http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/education/2014/11/12/sc-supreme-court-rules-rural-schools-favor/18911443/
[16] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/us/schools-for-native-americans-await-sorely-needed-overhaul.html?nlid=44355849&src=recpb&_r=0
[17] “First Fig.” Poetry, June 1918
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