Episcopal Press and News
Swing Marks 25th Year as Bay Area Bishop
Episcopal News Service. August 9, 2004 [080904-2-A]
Bob Williams
'I think it's very important to use leadership to help people grow up in stormy times' -- William Swing
In his 25 years as bishop of the San Francisco-based Diocese of California, Bill Swing has never missed a Sunday visitation scheduled among the 82 congregations he serves, and he's been out sick only four of the 9,100-plus days of his episcopate. His golf game is hole-in-one legendary, both in form and fundraising successes scored around the links of Pebble Beach. He's honest about the challenges he's faced as the Episcopal Church's senior active diocesan bishop. He's led his 35,000-member diocese through crises ranging from HIV/AIDS to 1989's 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake. He prizes the world's religions, and he knows about coalition-building, especially as a Republican who voted for George W. Bush in a region well known for its progressive Democratic political majority.
So when 1,500 Bay Area Episcopalians turned out July 31 to honor Swing and his wife, Mary, with a Saturday picnic bash at the hillside Bishop's Ranch retreat center in Sonoma County, richness of relationships and accomplishments were clearly causes to celebrate. During the festivities, chaired by laywoman Skip McCaw, the diocese's Canon Michael Hanson announced that fundraising would begin to outfit the Ranch with a new, $2 million "William and Mary Swing Hospitality Pavilion" in thanksgiving for their ministries. The couple greeted well-wishers gathered under tents, and the bishop offered them reflections titled "The Swing Shift: 25 Years of the 155 Years of the Diocese of California" (www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_48075_ENG_HTM.htm).
As festivities got under way, the bishop sat down with the Episcopal News Service to explore lessons that the wider church might take from his episcopate and the ministries of the Diocese of California. The text of that interview follows here.
ENS: The Diocese of California is distinguished by an overall sense of health. I think that comes from your sense of health approach for ministry. What would you recommend for other dioceses seeking to achieve health in their ministries?
SWING: I think a lot of it starts with physical health. I think it starts with people taking care of themselves, people giving some balance to their lives so that you're indoors-outdoors, you're praying and you're bustling in the secular world, you're singing and you're quiet and reading. You know, the phrase about "Be nice to yourself" -- I say that a lot to myself. Sometimes I ask myself, "What's the best thing I can do for the Diocese of California right now?" I've got a zillion things going and the answer is almost always: "Just please goof off right now." The most important thing when you're under pressure is to figure out some way to get your footing because an anxious, undone person gets in a lot of accidents and makes a lot of mistakes. If you have a good night's sleep, or if you go out and take a long walk, or get some sunshine, you tend to make better decisions and you've got more to offer people. You know, it's not just for me: I really want clergy to be healthy, I want them to have pastoral counseling, I want them to have some money to get away to do continuing education.
Also, I think some of it has to do with challenge. People need to challenge themselves, or allow themselves to be challenged. An awful lot of times, the church doesn't take on the obvious challenges that are there because it lacks a little bit of courage, like "I'll sit out this dance" when there's a cry out there. You say, "Well, if I just stay very quiet now, it'll go by, and I don't have to do anything." But I think part of health is taking on the challenge, whatever it is. Another part of health is not to take on all the challenges, take on the ones that you can pour yourself into, and if somebody else wants to take on something else, God bless 'em. Have some sort of sense of priority, because if you let yourself take on everything -- especially as a bishop -- you just get run ragged.
Going back to the earlier point, I often look at the Bible and think how many things happened indoors and how many things happened out of doors. And most of the occasions of meeting God were outdoors. So I think if it's true in the Bible, it might be true of us that we need to get out of doors to meet God sometimes.
ENS: Looking back beyond your ministry as rector of St. Columba's in Washington, D.C., to your childhood in West Virginia, when did you first feel called to the ordained ministry?
SWING: My father was a professional golfer, and we lived at a country club, and I didn't go to church. I sort of came in the back door by being an acolyte in the little neighborhood we moved into, with no thought of Episcopal or Anglican or anything -- it was just something you did as a kid. I remember a sermon when I was about 11 years old when the priest said, "Imagine when there was no Huntington, West Virginia; when there was no Ohio River; when there were no hills; ... no United States, ... no oceans, ... no mountains, ... no earth, ... no sun, ... no moon; there was nothing, and all there was was God." When he said those words, I was there. I understood the sheer magnificence, uniqueness, power of whoever God is. So in a sense my life got in alignment with that power on that occasion. And then afterwards growing up in the youth group and at summer camp, in lots of discussions with the parish priest, I got a sense that I was being called.
Also, I must say that when I was a boy in West Virginia, the most fun adults who were intellectually alive, spiritually alive, physically alive were Episcopal priests -- and it was kind of like: "I want to be one too." I thought they were great people, and I thought, "Gee, if I could grow up and be like that..." And what I wanted to do was grow up and be the vicar of the church in Moorefield and Petersburg, West Virginia, on the south branch of the Potomac River. I thought if I could aspire to be that, my life would be fulfilled. And I've never had a chance to be: instead of being along the banks of the south Potomac, I was in steel-mill towns, and I've never gotten near what I wanted to do. Everything else has been a surprise. I know what ordained ministry means: it means you're going to get to do what you want to do, you're going to go do something else.
ENS: Twenty-five years and you're still going strong. Any plans for retirement?
SWING: When you get my age, and you've been in the episcopacy as long as I have, you don't stay on in order to do the normal job, because a lot of people can do the normal job. A lot of people can do the rounds, go to the parishes, etc. You stay on to make sure some projects get done that only you uniquely can see to completion. I've got some things -- at the hospital, and with the Episcopal Homes Foundation, with the Ranch here, and with the cathedral, and with the diocese reorganizing -- that I've got to get done. And when those things are done, I'll be gone. Later in your ministry you're project-driven. I feel project-driven.
ENS: What do you see as important for the House of Bishops in particular and for the wider church at this point in the life of the church?
SWING: I heard a bishop say when I was a young bishop, "If I had known how hard it was going to be to go through women's ordination, as a bishop, I would have declined to be nominated." I heard that statement, and I had the opposite reaction. I thought: what a challenge it would be to take a bunch of people through a crisis, and allow them to feel it and internalize it, and move with it and grow up with it, and not infantilize people, a leave them back in history so that they get stuck and it will take three or four generations of people in that place to move beyond them. I think it's very important to use leadership to help people grow up in stormy times.
So, it's not a matter of having an instant victory or an instant defeat. I've gone to the House of Bishops and General Convention and been defeated decade after decade. You know, some of the people who have lost some of the votes recently are screaming bloody murder; I've been defeated forever, and I don't think that's the point. I don't think the point is whether you're defeated or successful, or happy or sad. I think the point is God's called you to lead this tribe of Israel to the other shore -- not to infantilize them and allow them to stay in their own prejudices or biases or opinions, but to keep it going so that everybody has to keep growing up.
ENS: The Diocese of California -- with its many fiscal and political conservatives as well as its progressives -- is in many respects a model for the rest of the church in terms of balancing different points of view. How does a diocese bring all of this together so that its ministries move forward?
SWING: First of all, the Bay Area is a combination of conservative people and liberal people, although its reputation is solidly liberal. You can't have 80-some churches in very wealthy places without having a lot of conservative congregations and clergy and laity. Everybody is under the same tension right now. I'll bet you [bishops] Tom Shaw in Boston, and Ed Salmon in South Carolina, John Howe in Florida and I are under the same tension. If you ever woke us up in the middle of the night and asked us, "What's going on?" I think we'd all pretty much say the same thing.
I had a clergy conference in the early 1980s to deal with the gay and lesbian issue with the clergy, and a lot of the dioceses are doing stuff we were doing 20 or 30 years ago, so in a sense a lot of this is doubling back for us. But that's not to say we're ahead or smarter or anything else, it just means the body matured around this issue. Two things I'd say: number one, there's got to be some perspective that what we're dealing with is a long-term issue. This is not a matter that's going to get resolved at a convention: it's not going to get resolved at one convention or two conventions; we're talking about things that go so deep in the human psyche that its going to take lifetimes to get on the other side of the issues that we're struggling with now. I think the people who say, "Well, we're just going to go to convention and vote and get this thing solved," they're just aiming for trouble. There's got to be some historic and psychological perspective on this stuff that this is long-term, this is not short-term.
I've lived through two epidemics in the gay and lesbian community. One epidemic was characterized by promiscuity, AIDS and death. The other epidemic was characterized by loving commitment, blessing, and adopting children. You have to ask yourself which is the more morally commendable?
Also, I'm a conservative person. I'm a Republican. I voted for George W. Bush. Yet I am seen as a raving liberal throughout the church. I'm very conservative about marriage. I'm very conservative about hard work. I'm very conservative that you celebrate the sacraments; if you're going to preach, you say your prayers, and you read the Bible and you do your homework. Inside myself, I have an awful lot of conservative tendencies, and I serve a constituency that is primarily liberal, and we get along just fine. And so, I'm really glad I'm not a raving liberal in San Francisco, because I think we'd all go off the deep end.
What you have to do if you want to do the job right, don't let one issue blind the mission of your diocese. I've always told the gay and lesbian community that I'll support you, but not to the extent that I'm going to let all the other ministries die. So in one sense, everybody's got to take a number and stand in line: we'll get to you when we can get to you; we've got things to do with the homeless, we've got things to do with the elderly, we've got things to do with children, etc., and we're not going to stop everything just to fight one battle. We have to keep moving, and we'll deal with you while we're moving. We're not going to stop and just deal with you.
ENS: In the current world climate, we have the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. What do you recommend for peacemaking in these contexts?
SWING: In the present situation in the world, I think everybody is as sophisticated as they need to be because of newspapers and television news, etc., so I don't need to be preaching a whole lot about that ... unless I have something that God has put as a hot coal in my mouth, then I have to say it. What I feel like doing is taking the central issue involved here where I have some input, and that is with the various religions in the world, and I can do something about that. When people say "The United States of America is at war with Islam," well, you just rang my bell, and that's where I can come in and get to work. I'm not a politician, but I am a person of religion, so when you're dealing with my subject, it's my responsibility to know Islamic people at a great depth and to learn about historically where Islam and Christianity have been, where we are presently around the world in different countries, and what can happen in the United States of America, and then witness to a better way of interacting -- I can do that through the United Religions Initiative. That's where I want to invest myself. (More on the initiative is posted on-line at www.uri.org.)
ENS: You established the United Religions Initiative in 1995 inspired by the 50th anniversary of the founding -- in San Francisco -- of the United Nations. What do you find new and encouraging about the Initiative as its work continues to develop?
SWING: Our cooperation circles have gone from none at charter signing, to having 100, to having 200; now we're almost having 300, and we'll soon have 1,000. We're in 50 countries in the world; we have people from 80 different religions; we have offices on five continents -- and we get more than 1 million hits a month on our website because people when they read the newspapers figure out that religion and war have something to do with each other. And people instinctively know that religion has got to have something to do with peace, and so they're hunting around the world to see if religion is anything other than pious war-mongering. There's a great race on, and the race is among people of religion: part of the group wants to get their hands on nuclear, biological, chemical weapons to control, and the other half wants to arrive at some level playing field of values and peacemaking among religions, and whoever gets there first will determine the survival of the planet.
ENS: What was your experience earlier this summer in Barcelona at the recent Parliament of the World's Religions?
SWING: Well, it was just a glorious mess. I loved it: 10,000-12,000 people of all kinds of religions of the world, and visually it just tells you something to look out and see them. It's a religious thing to see. Number two, it is a great time to make contacts with people from all over the world; and number three, to sit at the feet of folks who are living in different situations than you are and just learn and broaden. Every place in the world is not talking about sex: there are other issues in the world.
The Parliament and the United Religions are brother and sister. They bring people around the world together every five years, and we bring people around the world together every day. They love us, and we love them. We greatly appreciate them. As a matter of fact, at the Parliament, they turned one evening over to us of the URI to carry on the Parliament's work.
I think we're at a crossroads with international interfaith work. We're all going to either break up into denominations or groups comparable to denominations, or we are going to figure out a way to complement each other and present a united front so that some day there will be a veritable United Religions, not just URI blown large, but something that will be created by the Holy Spirit that's way beyond our imaginations right now. That gets back to the race for peace among religions. I think the world is going to turn to us and say, "You guys have got to do better, for the sake of the world."
ENS: You were elected bishop at age 42, and you have said that from that point forward you found ways of clarifying for the diocese the priority you placed on your own family life. How have you and Mary and your children made your way through these 25 years?
SWING: We've been married for 43 years. We've made a lot of sacrifices, and a lot of times we haven't been able to be together because I'm off doing my thing and Mary's been off doing her thing. But one of the great things has been traveling: every once in a while we travel together, and spend 24 hours a day every day together -- and that's been a joy. I look forward to the kind of work that makes us do that. We have a lot of fun together.
We have two children; they live in the Bay Area. It's tough on children to have a father who's a priest and a bishop. They get yanked forward in the faith so mightily by the community that it's unfair. I always feel kind of sorry about children of clergy. Our children are great; we have a good time with them. They have wonderful senses of humor; they root for the Cincinnati Reds. We have the same kind of bias in sports and music, and in a lot of things. In politics, we fight like mad.
We have our four grandchildren in the Bay Area. As a matter of fact, Mary and I are going to stay here at the Ranch for the next week and take our two youngest grandchildren and live with them for eight days in an intergenerational camp here.
ENS: Through the years, your leadership has been clear in the development of ministry at Grace Cathedral and in overseeing major building projects on the close. What do you foresee in particular for the future of Grace Cathedral?
SWING: An aside: when I re-read what I've written
(www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_48075_ENG_HTM.htm) the thing that got me is how much you can't say ... I mean, there are volumes that go into one little sentence. If you say, "We're going to tear down a building" ... Wait a minute, what does it mean to tear down a building on Nob Hill in San Francisco, and how much courage does it take to even say we're going to even think about this? And how many miracles of fundraising, and how many times you go to the city, and how many names you put up, and how much this, and how much that: nothing can do justice to what the reality was, and all of that is summed up in saying "We tore down a building; we finished the project."
One of the things that's absolutely crucial in all of this is: one thing that's absolutely demanded of a bishop is courage. I mean, you either stand up to Goliath, or you make the sandwiches for your brothers and go home.
I think as the world becomes more and more secular, a cathedral becomes more and more important because it is an entire to the life of the spirit for people who are spiritually illiterate. And there's a bigness about it. I came up with a sentence the other day: Where false certainty ends, genuine mystery begins. Where? Grace Cathedral. Where? The Episcopal Church.
ENS: How is your golf game?
SWING: It's pretty good. Yeah, have a nine handicap, and I still win money from my buddies. I lose occasionally, but I get right back.
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