Requiescat in Pace: The Right Rev. Edgar Otis Charles

St. Mark's Cathedral, Salt Lake City
PHOTO: Christian Paolino

The board and staff of Integrity sadly mark the passing of the Right Rev. Edgar Otis Charles, eighth Bishop of Utah, who died December 26th in San Francisco.  Bishop Charles came out as a gay man shortly after his retirement, the first Christian bishop to do so.

"As a bishop, I have been privileged to be with Otis as a fellow bishop, colleague and friend," said the Right Rev. Scott Hayashi, the present Bishop of Utah. "My prayers are being offered for Otis and all his family and friends who, like me, will always be grateful for his life and witness, and who will miss him terribly."

Born in April 24th, 1926 in Norristown, Penna., Bishop Charles grew up in New Jersey, attended General Theological Seminary in New York, and was ordained a priest in 1951. He worked in the Diocese of Connecticut from 1959-1971, founding two schools there.

In 1971, Charles stood for the episcopacy of both that diocese and Utah, ultimately being called to the latter. He served as Utah's eighth bishop but the first following its conversion into a diocese from a Mission Area, while also shepherding the neighboring Navajoland Mission Area and chairing the board of St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City.  "[Otis] carried the diocese forward during a time of great challenge and few resources," said Bishop Hayashi. "Where others might see scarcity, Bishop Charles saw an abundance of spiritual resources from God and in the hearts and wills of the people of the Diocese of Utah."Active in the peace movement, Bishop Charles helped organize resistance to the development of missile sites in Utah and Nevada.

Between 1968 and 1982, Bishop Charles also participated in the creation of the current Book of Common Prayer as a member of the Standing Liturgical Commission.  In 1985, he left Utah to become the Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Cambridge, Mass.  In 1997, the Otis Charles Chair of Applied Theology was created via a $1.7M grant, the largest single gift in the school's history.

The Right Rev. E. Otis Charles surrounded by members of the
El Camino Real chapter of Integrity at San Jose Pride in 2001
PHOTO CREDIT: Bart Bartosh

Bishop Charles was married for over 40 years and had five children.  He discussed his same-gender attraction with his wife Elvira in the 1970s, but they remained married until after his retirement 1993, when he made headlines by identifying publicly as a gay man.

"Otis' decision to come out, even though he was retired, changed the equation in the House of Bishops," said the Rev. Michael Hopkins, former President of Integrity.  "No longer could they talk about them."

Bishop Charles moved to the San Francisco Bay area and, in 1995, helped establish the California branch of The OASIS, a diocesan ministry to gay and lesbian (and now bisexual and transgender) people. "At whatever age you come out, you have to live through whatever you've missed," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Even though you're 67, you have to go through a process I associate with adolescence. Hopefully, you do it with a little more maturity and grace."

"Otis Charles was part of the bridge generation - those who dared to reach across the chasm of what was to what could be - building a bridge to somewhere. Those who had no examples of how to live authentically as LGBT people and so became examples for those who came after them. Examples of how to tell the truth about their lives - even after decades of denial to themselves and to others. Examples of how to claim the blessing of God's presence in their life and in their love as a witness to a work of healing, of hope, of wholeness," wrote the Rev. Canon Susan Russell, a fellow Californian who also served as Integrity's president.  Her memories of Bishop Charles were republished by The Episcopal Cafe.

Bishop Charles frequently lobbied the church on behalf of LGBT people, including at the 73rd General Convention in Denver in 2000, when he rallied with the Christian justice group Soulforce.

Dr. Felipe Sanchez-Paris & Bishop Otis Charles
at the Castro Street Fair in 2009
PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Sokol
flickr.com/viamediainsfo

In 2001, he met Dr. Felipe Sanchez-Paris, who would become his new life partner.  Bishop Charles and Sanchez-Paris appear together in the documentary about The Right Rev. Gene Robinson Love Free or Die, in which Bishop Charles compared trying to living as a straight man to wearing a suit of the wrong size.  "With Felipe, the suit fits."

On April 29, 2004, Bishop Charles' 78th birthday, the two were united at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in a ceremony that lasted nearly three hours. They legally married in 2008, and testified together at the 2009 General Convention in Anaheim in favor of the rite for blessing same-sex relationships which was subsequently approved.  Just days before Bishop Charles' death, Utah became the 19th state with marriage equality.

Bishop Charles is preceded in death by his beloved Felipe. Dr. Sanchez-Paris died unexpectedly in his sleep on July 31st of this year.  In recent months, Bishop Charles struggled with a series of health setbacks, and he entered hospice care earlier this month.  Services will be held both at St. Gregory's in San Francisco and St. Mark's Cathedral in Salt Lake City, where Sanchez-Paris is interred.

Christian Paolino is Chair of the Stakeholders' Council of Integrity

Eyebrows, Up! EDS Courts African Bishop Spurned by Dartmouth

In July of this year, the Rt. Rev. James Tengatenga, Anglican Bishop of Southern Malawi, was offered an appointment as Dean of the William Jewett Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College. A month later, the offer was rescinded. On November 15, Episcopal Divinity School, with the support of the Episcopal Dioceses of Connecticut and Massachusetts, announced that Bishop Tengatenga had been offered a six-month presidential fellowship. It’s enough to give LGBTQ activists whiplash, since the withdrawal of Dartmouth’s offer was due to protests by campus LGBTQ activists, and Episcopal Divinity School is the most progressive, pro-LGBTQ seminary of the Episcopal Church.

On August 15, the Boston Globe reported on the rescinding of the offer from Dartmouth:

"His [Bishop Tengatenga’s] appointment had sparked a campus controversy as word spread that he had sharply criticized the election of the Right Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, and that he had asserted in 2011 that the Anglican dioceses in Malawi remained 'totally against homosexuality.'" 

These two statements are technically true, and are surrounded by some very complicated context.

The withdrawal of the offer to Bishop Tengatenga sparked a letter of support with 14 signatories, including the Most. Rev. Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa; the Right Rev. Ian T. Douglas, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut; and the Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, President and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School. The letter, which was published in The Living Church, reads, in part:

"The President’s decision brought applause from some in the Dartmouth community. Others were appalled, as are we. The action represents a gross injustice to an individual who would have made an ideal person to provide moral and ethical leadership at the College. It casts serious doubts on what is being learned in American universities when members of those communities fail to distinguish between public positions of institutions and the views of individuals who participate in those institutions. It reflects badly on western human rights advocates who consciously or unconsciously engage in forms of cultural imperialism that undermine their own success and credibility by demanding proofs identical to their own kind and, in this instance, by also ignoring the voices of Africans and church leaders who have known and worked with Tengatenga in some cases for decades."

Andrew Longhi, a junior at Dartmouth, is among those who were not convinced of Bishop Tengatenga’s support of LGBTQ rights. In an article in the Huffington Post, he states, "Tengatenga's appointment is deeply disrespectful to the Dartmouth LGBT community and its allies, who need leaders whom they can trust and learn from."

The withdrawal of Bishop Tengatenga’s appointment as Dean of the Tucker Foundation left the bishop without a job (he had already resigned his episcopate in Southern Malawi) and his public statements in favor of LGBT rights (after his appointment but before the controversy surfaced) left him in a difficult position should he try to return to Malawi.

Episcopal Divinity School stepped into the breach by offering Bishop Tengatenga a six-month Presidential Fellowship. EDS’ press release gives examples of the Bishop’s support of LGBTQ rights in his context:

"Bishop Tengatenga’s long record of support for LGBTQ rights in his native Malawi and across Africa was a decisive factor in inviting him to EDS as a Presidential Fellow. In 2007, Bishop Tengatenga opposed a move by church leaders in Africa to cut ties with the U.S. Episcopal Church because of its support of LGBTQ clergy, and in 2010, together with bishops from Central and Southern Africa, wrote a strong counter-statement to an anti-LGBTQ communique from church leaders at the All-African Anglican Bishops' Conference."

So, what are we to conclude about Bishop Tengatenga’s support for LGBTQ rights? Personally, I am persuaded by the testimony of those who know him; people whom I know personally and whose LGBTQ activist credentials I trust. Thanks to EDS, we will have opportunities to hear more from Bishop Tengatenga himself. I look forward to learning more.

Marie Alford-Harkey is Province I Coordinator of Integrity and Deputy Director of the Religious Institute. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School.