My address to the 234th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island
2025

Have Faith 401 — Convention Address

A number of years ago, at a meeting of General Convention, I heard that a bishop from Central Africa had said something that has stayed with me since. I was chairing the Legislative Committee on Evangelism at the time, and in the course of our deliberations we were reminded, very quietly, “Conversion is a sovereign act of God. Conversion, repentance, essentially changing a person’s mind is not something we can manipulate people into doing.”

That statement has been a touchstone for me. Because in the Church, especially in the United States, we are so easily tempted to imagine that if we just find the right strategy, the right program, the right branding or messaging, then we’ll be able to make people believe – in the sorts of things we think they should believe in. We can change their minds; we can convert them. We can sound at times as if the Spirit of God is something we can bottle, label, and sell — like it’s a product that simply needs the right advertising budget.

That’s one reason, among others, that the “Megachurch marketing model” has always made me uneasy. It feels uncomfortably close to what Simon the Great was trying to do in the Book of Acts. Simon, seeing the apostles healing and proclaiming in the power of the Spirit, offered them money to buy that power. He didn’t want to be a disciple. He just wanted to control the process. He wanted to be one who could dispense the Spirit at will.

And that’s precisely the opposite of what the Gospel teaches us. Waiting on the Spirit requires patience. It requires trust. And it requires a kind of faith that doesn’t always make sense — especially in the cultural and political environment we’re living in right now.

A God Moment, Not a Human Moment


I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we’re in a season when there is no purely human action that is going to “fix” what’s broken — in this country or around the world. Our politics are polarized. Our public discourse is fraying. Our trust in one another and in institutions, including the Church, has been eroded. People are exhausted and fearful, and that fear is being manipulated on every side.

We’ve been here before, in different forms and different centuries. But what makes this moment especially difficult is the speed at which fear, outrage, and misinformation move. It can feel overwhelming — and it can tempt the Church to think, “We’ve got to solve this. We’ve got to restore order. We’ve got to find the magic words to bring people back to sanity.”

But this is a God moment, not a human moment. The story of salvation has never been about human cleverness or force of will. It has always been about God acting in God’s time — sometimes swiftly, more often slowly, and nearly always in ways we don’t expect.

It won’t play out like a Hollywood movie or a well-crafted novel, where there’s a sudden twist and everything is set right by the end of Act III. This is more like the long, hard road Jesus described when he said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” This is the part of the story where the people of God keep walking, keep trusting, keep bearing witness, even when the path ahead isn’t clear.

The Work We Still Do


And here’s the thing: the fact that God’s action is sovereign doesn’t mean we sit idle. We still plant seeds. We still do the work of proclaiming the Good News. We’re still harvesting the fruits that the Spirit has planted.

In fact, we are seeing new aspirants for holy orders here in Rhode Island. We’re seeing people stirred to ask questions about vocation, about ministry, about their role in the Body of Christ. Baptisms are increasing. Adult baptisms are increasing. And confirmations are increasing. New members are joining our churches. New ecumenical initiatives are being started. The latest parochial statistics from across the Episcopal Church indicate that we’re not alone in this experience.

That’s good news. The Spirit is active; we are witnesses to that. It’s a reminder to pray more. To lean in more deeply. To witness more faithfully in the ways that we are now doing.

And that kind of witness will often look strange to the world around us. It’s so different than what they expect that they’ll think we’re ignoring the situation they’re facing, or more likely, we’re avoiding conflict. But they’re wrong. We are wrestling with powers that they don’t understand and using methods that they don’t recognize.

Wrestling with Principalities and Powers

When the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was asked to name the most important Episcopal theologian of the 20th century, he didn’t choose one of the academic celebrities of Yale or Harvard. He said, “William Stringfellow.”

Some of you know Stringfellow’s name. He lived on Block Island for a season and worshiped at St. Ann’s by the Sea. He famously sheltered the Berrigan brothers when they were wanted for their anti-war actions. But more than that, Stringfellow wrote with piercing clarity about the spiritual reality of political and cultural forces. He believed — and here he was drawing on the language of St. Paul — those nations, movements, and institutions, more often than not, take on their own spiritual identity and power. They become what Paul called “the principalities and powers.”

Stringfellow didn’t mean that metaphorically. He meant it theologically. He believed that behind the structures of human society are spiritual forces, often in rebellion against God, that try to shape our lives and our world in ways that are destructive, self-justifying, and idolatrous.

The Methodist theologian Walter Wink expanded on this, and his work — along with that of René Girard — has deeply shaped my own thinking. Wink argued that the Church makes a critical mistake when it tries to fight these powers with the tools of worldly power: coercion, control, manipulation, fear. Those are the very tools the powers use against us. When we pick them up, we’ve already conceded the field.

The only power the Church has that the world does not is the power of the Spirit. And that’s not something we control. That’s something we bear witness to.

There’s a story some of you may remember — a group of Catholic nuns went to a missile silo in North Dakota and performed an exorcism on the weapon of mass destruction stored there. To many people, that looked absurd. It was mocked in the press. But in Stringfellow’s and Wink’s theological vision, it made perfect sense. They weren’t trying to control a geopolitical outcome. They were naming a spiritual reality and bearing witness to a different power.

That weapon was never used.

When I was in seminary, during the first Gulf War, my classmates and I didn’t join demonstrations or do acts of civil disobedience, we fasted and held vigil prayer.

That war was over in hours, though not without loss of life and subsequent destruction of numerous oil fields.

We have spiritual tools that are ours by right of the Spirit’s gift. Prayer, fasting, worship, the discerning of the Spirits and the rebuking of the ones that are not of God. I believe that in a moment like this, when the conflict confronting us is as much spiritual as it is political, those tools are much more likely to be effective than the worldly tools would be.

Everybody is Claiming to Be on Jesus’ Side

We live in a time when every political party, every faction, every movement claims that Jesus is on their side. And it’s very likely that many of those claims are false — including, at times, our own. It’s easy to confuse the Gospel with our own preferences or our own tribe. It’s easy to want Jesus to baptize our politics instead of letting the Gospel interrogate them.

That’s why the Church’s primary task in moments like this isn’t to seize the levers of worldly power. It’s to be faithful. To keep showing up. To keep speaking and acting in ways that reveal the character of Jesus Christ: humility, courage, truth-telling, mercy, justice, and hope that refuses to die.

We won’t convince everyone. We’re not supposed to. Conversion is a sovereign act of God. Our work is to be a community where the Spirit has room to act.

Have Faith 401


This year’s convention theme is Have Faith 401. (It’s also the password for the guest network at the diocesan offices.) The theme is a Rhode Island based way of naming a larger truth. Faith is what holds us steady when we can’t control outcomes. Faith is what lets us keep planting seeds in rocky ground. Faith is what keeps us showing up in an age when the world is shouting and scattering.

It is not passive. It is not naïve, though I have been told it is both. It is a stubborn, disciplined trust in God’s redemptive work — even, and perhaps especially, when we cannot see how the story resolves. As I read Scripture, I repeatedly see this message. God’s specific charge to God’s people is that they should not fall into the trap of acting in a way that mirrors the rulers of this world, instead they should keep themselves holy and separate, unstained and sinless.

So yes, let’s organize, plan, strategize. But let’s do all of that with open hands, trusting that the Spirit, not our marketing, clever mottos or stratagems, will move hearts. Let us witness in ways the world may not understand. Let us name the powers honestly. And let us remember that we are not the saviors of this nation or of the world. God is.

Our call is to be faithful. Let God do with our faith as God wills.

There is power in our liturgies. There is power in our public processions, in our blessings and in the everyday kindness we show to our neighbors – and to our enemies. We give water to the thirst, knowledge and insight to the seeker, comfort to the bereaved and healing to the sick and dying. In all things we conquer in the Name of the One who saved us. Those who have eyes and ears can see this. The World struggles to understand.

In this coming year, I urge you to have faith, to see the light that surrounds people of faith and to look for the signs that God is present in this moment – we are not alone. And then to share that vision with whoever you can and however you are able. It is that Hope that will, in the end, save us.