Episcopal Press and News
Bishop Browne Recalls Liberian Upbringing
Episcopal News Service. [79117]
Isabel Baumgartner
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Had it not been for a bold action by his mother, George Daniel Browne would be not the Episcopal Bishop of Liberia but chief medicine man of his illiterate native Grebo tribe.
The bishop's paternal grandfather held that elevated pagan position which, by tradition, passes to oldest son and then oldest son of oldest son.
Bishop Browne's father died when the child was three. His Americo-Liberian mother stole her son away from their village by boat in the middle of the night, determined somehow to give him an education and a Christian upbringing. Despite severe hardship, she succeeded.
"We were not reunited, my family and tribe and I," the bishop said, "until after I became a priest, and not fully reconciled until I was elected bishop. " His ivory pectoral cross was made for him by his family, from the tusk of an elephant killed (not for that purpose) by a relative. He prizes it, he says, "because it means I am one again with my people."
Bishop Browne was interviewed on tape for The Tennessee Churchman by his friend since seminary years, the Rev. Douglass Bailey, rector of Memphis's Calvary Church. The Liberian leader preached there to noonday congregations averaging 200 people during the week of March 18-24, in the series of Lenten services which Calvary Church originated years ago.
His native first name translates as "empty-handed. " It was initially taken to mean that "my people expected me not to close my hand tight when I had anything in it and someone else had a need," Bishop Browne says. "Now, it has come to mean liberal in spirit."
A graduate of the Church-owned Cuttington College in Suacoco and of Virginia Theological Seminary, the young priest served five scattered missions from 1964 until 1968 when he became Cuttington's chaplain. He was elected bishop -- first Liberian to hold that office -- in 1970, at a time when the Liberian Church was 96 percent financially dependent on the U.S. Episcopal Church. "My goal," he points out, "is that we become self-supporting in the years God has for me to work. We're nearly 53 percent independent now."
The 1976 General Convention authorized the Liberian diocese -- sole U.S. jurisdiction on the African continent -- to affiliate with the Anglican Church of West Africa; now an associate, it becomes a full member in a few more years.
Bishop Browne points out that a chief need of his people is the translation of the Bible into their 12 native languages, a formidable task already in progress with help from the American Bible Society. Next, he says, the liturgy needs to be translated, to bring it alive in such a different culture.
"It is more than taking a word from this language to that language," the bishop notes. "We must deal with whole concepts, connotations, and surrounding images. The process is really a form of evangelism; our translators learn more and more of the faith as they go along." Of about 15, 000 communicants, only one in three speaks English.
Fewer than 40 priests serve Liberia's 106 congregations, so lay people give wide leadership as catechists, evangelists, and pastors. In addition, the bishop finds a great benefit in Canon 8 which allows him to "pull a person out of a particular ethnic area, train him, and send him back as a priest. We have four such priests now, and more preparing."
Liberia is plagued by communication problems, and the Church is seeking a solution. "Half the time, our telephones don't work. And when I send a cablegram to a priest saying I'll be in his village next week, I get there before the message does." The Bishop is studying the possibility of a ham radio network using radios powered not by electricity (which most villages don't have) but by car batteries.
"We can afford a car battery for each village."
![[thumbnail: The Rev. Douglass Bailey,...]](/ENS/photographs/thumbnails/79117_thb.jpg) |