Episcopal Press and News
Episcopalians Headed to Phoenix even though King Holiday Still in Limbo
Episcopal News Service. September 26, 1990 [90250]
Nan Ross, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Arizona
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 20 -- With or without a Martin Luther King holiday, Arizona is and should be the site for the Episcopal Church's next General Convention, asserted one of the church's black bishops.
Herbert Thompson, bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, said, "No matter what happens... we should go anyway; we have a ministry to exercise and a witness to bear."
Thompson is one of many church leaders who have struggled with Arizona's on-again, off-again King Day -- in limbo once more until a public referendum in November.
For Thompson, the precedent for how to respond to Arizona has been set in South Africa, "where we have looked to Bishop Desmond Tutu for direction. In Arizona, we should take our cues from [Bishop Joseph T.] Joe Heistand, who has been fighting for this holiday for a long time. We owe our support to him."
While meeting with the Episcopal House of Bishops in Washington, D.C., September 13-20, Heistand reassured his colleagues that in a recent polling 58 percent of Arizonans approve the holiday.
Heistand added, "Because Evan Mecham was so soundly defeated in a primary election last week, we have another indication that the state wants to be finished with the King Day issue and move on." Mecham, who was impeached and removed from the governor's office in 1989, lost in his sixth try for the post September 11.
Heistand and other Arizona civic leaders have assured the church that the matter would be settled before the convention is convened in Phoenix next July. The event will draw more than 10,000 Episcopalians for nearly two weeks of church business and is considered a plum for the state's economy, which has suffered from convention boycotts over the King Day issue.
Heistand serves on a committee of local business and religious leaders that is directing still another campaign to educate voters and encourage them to go to the polls.
Thompson said that he believes actions such as Heistand's are signs that the Episcopal Church "has been on the right side of the King Day issue. We've been very, very clear on where we stand as a church. There may be some people who think we shouldn't go to Phoenix (without a holiday secured). But I believe that as a church, like Bishop Tutu has [done] in South Africa, we have to set a precedent of staying in there to witness to what we believe in."
Bishop Orris "Jay" Walker of Long Island (New York) is another black bishop who linked the King Day issue to South Africa. "It is to our credit that our church has been forthright in our support for issues like this in our country as well as in South Africa and in the Middle East. I see a common thread in all of this that we can work through this."
Co-hosting the convention with the Diocese of Arizona are Episcopalians from the Navajoland Area Mission. "I hope the King Day issue will pass in November," said Navajo Bishop Steven Plummer. "A lot of Navajo people think Martin Luther King stood for them, too. His dream and the Navajos' dream is the same."
In the final moments of the House of Bishops meeting, Heistand extended to the bishops and their spouses a "very warm welcome to Phoenix next July." He told the group that last June when the thermometer reached an all-time high of 122 degrees he received calls from four anxious bishops, all asking, "What was it like?"
"Hot," Heistand told them. "When they asked me what it would be like next July, I told them: 'Hot."' Heistand said Phoenix is the nation's eighth largest city, and 2.5 million people go to work there every day. "We have air conditioning that really works."