Erie experiences, Pa. resiliency prepared Sean Rowe to lead Episcopal Church

• The Rev. Sean Rowe was elected presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church at age 49.
• Rowe credits his experience leading the smaller congregations in northwestern Pennsylvania for preparing him for the top job.
• He expressed regret over part of the process for handling a past sexual abuse allegation, noting it could retraumatize victims.

The Most Rev. Sean Rowe, leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church, learned how to be a bishop in northwestern Pennsylvania.

He was only 32 in 2007 when he was elected bishop of the Erie-based Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania after serving as a rector in Franklin. At 49, he was elected as presiding bishop and primate of the 1.4-million member Episcopal Church. After he was chosen to be the presiding bishop in 2024, Rowe told the Erie Times-News that his experience working in the 13-county northwestern Pennsylvania diocese helped him gain the experience he needed for the mainline Protestant denomination’s top job.

Rowe said the Erie region’s smaller congregations represent the broader base of the New York City-based Episcopal Church, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Rowe also served as bishop provisional of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York for five years when it shared a bishop and staff with the Pennsylvania diocese.

“One thing I’ve learned in northwestern Pennsylvania is resilience,” Rowe said in 2024.

More recently, he responded to questions from the Erie Times-News related to challenges and issues he faces today and how his experiences in Erie have shaped his approach to his work leading the Christian denomination.

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Q&A with The Most Rev. Sean Rowe

Question: How did your experiences leading the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania prepare you to lead the Episcopal Church?

Answer: We are resilient people here in northwestern Pennsylvania, and we already have decades of experience with institutional decline and the need to be more resourceful and innovative with less. Much of our church is facing that reality now for the first time. I learned from the people of the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania how to have the direct and authentic conversations required to navigate through these kinds of hard times, and how to persevere even when it is tempting to give up. I will always admire the people of this diocese for taking on the challenges of ministry with such grit and love for our neighbors. Their example continues to guide and inspire me every day.

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In Erie, you dealt with claims of sexual abuse against a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania. If you received a similar claim about a leader in the Episcopal Church, how would you respond? Would you do anything differently?

I would respond to any allegation of sexual abuse by taking immediate action, just as I did back in 2010. I do have one regret from that experience, and it has changed the way I listen to and work with victims of clergy abuse: In my first formal meeting with the courageous young woman who brought the horrific abuse perpetrated by one of my predecessors to light, we complied with the intent of our church’s disciplinary structures and canon laws by having lawyers, psychologists and me, a bishop, all present to hear her tell the story of her abuse. She was brave and persevered. I learned that meetings like this run a high risk of retraumatizing victims and should not be part of our investigative process. I will always regret that, working within a faulty structure, I learned this lesson at the expense of a woman to whom the church had already done its worst.

Thoughts on immigration

Erie and the Episcopal Church both have experience welcoming immigrants yet the Episcopal Migration Ministries no longer resettles white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees. What are your thoughts on the current state of immigration in the United States, within the Episcopal Church and in Erie?

I think that immigration has become a wedge issue in the United States, and I think that is also true to some extent in our church and in our city. The divide at this point is so pronounced that people with different political views sometimes seem to be inhabiting two separate realities.

As the leader of the Episcopal Church, I want to ask Christians to think about immigration not in the divisive terms that politics and social media use to box us in, but based on the scriptural commands to welcome the stranger and care for the vulnerable. If enough of us took that seriously, I think our country would have a sane immigration policy and humane enforcement that would protect human dignity and respect the rule of law.

In our church, we believe that the people at the so-called margins of society are actually at the center of God’s story, and we don’t believe we can truly be the church unless all of us — immigrants and citizens — have safe access to worship and a fair chance at a life of dignity and freedom. That’s why, even before we declined to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa, we became litigants in a lawsuit challenging the executive order that rolled back protections from immigration enforcement in sensitive locations like houses of worship, schools and hospitals. 

Erie proud

How often do you get back to Erie County and what do you think of the direction it is heading?

My family and I actually still live in Erie, and while I travel a great deal in my new job, I still shop locally, check books out from Blasco (Library), and look forward to opening day at Waldameer (Park & Water World). I’m proud of our city and the progress we’ve made, especially in stabilizing our public schools and diversifying the local economy, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the Bayfront Parkway project. I miss being deeply involved in the life of the city, but I am grateful it is still my home.

Value of religious life

As you look at your own Episcopal Church and the mainline Christian churches in general, it appears that attendance continues to decline. What should the larger church do to demonstrate the value of religious life and church affiliation? 

No matter where I travel across the Episcopal Church, the people I meet are hungry to be part of a community that rejects the loneliness and social fragmentation plaguing our world today. Being part of a religious tradition and a local congregation helps us live in a different way — as people who are always looking for signs of God’s redeeming love at work in the world and participating in them.

The forces that corrode our relationships with one another, with creation and with ourselves are strong, and some days they seem to have the upper hand. When we gather together for worship, prayer, study and service, we can instead shape our lives by being in communion with God, each other and the world. At its best, our church offers a meaning-starved world the feast for which it is longing, and I hope that everyone who is hungry for that experience will join us.

Dana Massing can be reached at dmassing@gannett.com.