Episcopal Press and News
Bishop Joseph Heistand of Arizona Is a Long-time Champion of Civil Rights
Episcopal News Service. May 14, 1991 [91126]
Ben Winton, Writer for the Phoenix Gazette
Ever since he confronted the issue of racism as a young priest in Richmond, Virginia, Joseph T. Heistand found himself to be at times a mediator, and at times the catalyst for racial equality. Now as bishop of Arizona, Heistand remains in the middle of a racial debate, one in which he worries Episcopalians are only giving "lip service" to the creed that "we're all one family."
Since November 1990, when Arizona voters narrowly rejected a paid holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., the church has engaged in a sometimes heated debate over how to make the best witness to civil rights in the face of the defeat of the holiday.
This summer, as Arizona continues its struggle over whether to create a paid holiday, the issue is expected to have a major impact on the Episcopal Church's 1991 General Convention in Phoenix.
Heistand, whose diocese plays host to the convention, welcomes the debate as "a gift," a chance for Episcopalians to explore feelings about race.
The church's special Executive Council meeting in January in Newark voted to affirm the earlier decision to meet in Phoenix. It was there that Heistand, a man coworkers call soft-spoken but steel-willed, spoke passionately in support of Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning's desire to go to Phoenix in order to make "a vigorous witness" in favor of civil rights.
The national church's debate has focused attention on the sharp difference of opinions on race within the church, and on the small progress the church has made in nearly four decades on the race issue, Heistand said during interviews at his Phoenix office this spring.
"My hope is the national church will see the Episcopal Church in Arizona working for civil rights and that the people of Arizona will see the Episcopal Church as a community of diverse backgrounds, able to work together," Heistand said. He worries that four decades of relative unchanged racial sentiments means that the church is failing to take a hard enough look at racism.
Heistand said his "strong sense of justice," not a desire to put the Arizona diocese in the spotlight, motivated his efforts to keep the General Convention in Phoenix. "God made of one blood all the races of mankind. Blood is blood," Heistand said.
It was Heistand's experience as a young adult, and later his experiences in Richmond, that solidified his strong convictions on racial equality.
Prior to his 1952 ordination, Heistand said he was "trying to find some answers to the meaning of life." In World War II, he served in the 3rd Infantry Division in Africa and the Middle East.
"I was disillusioned over the stupidity of war. The destruction of human life, the land, buildings, a nation's history. I came out of the war as a cynic, probably an agnostic," Heistand said. After the war, he went to work as a salesman for International Harvester and was successful. But life was empty, Heistand said. It was the influence of his father, the Rt. Rev. John Thomas Heistand, that eventually led the younger Heistand to enter seminary. "My father said, 'You're part of the human race. You have to play a part. Do what you can in it.'"
"I never could stand seeing people bullied or put down," Heistand said. By the time he went to Richmond, his sense of justice was ready to be tested. Heistand found himself in the middle of the furor as rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond -- the "Cathedral of the Confederacy."
In the city of Richmond, segregation laws were downright cruel, Heistand said. Blacks found it difficult to find access to health care. Anglican friends from Africa could not dine with Heistand, who is white, in Richmond's segregated restaurants. Virginia was caught up in the fight to oppose the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision. Episcopal schools were also segregated.
"To be there, in the midst of it, to hear some of the horror stories, just violated my sense of justice," Heistand said.
Quietly, as he still does on social justice issues, Heistand set about to work for equality. He met with black pastors. At one of the first meetings, white pastors met with black pastors.
"The whites asked the blacks, 'Just what are you struggling for?'" Heistand said. "The blacks said, 'The same thing as you. We don't want anything more than you have. We don't want anything less.'"
Within a year, the first steps toward integration had begun. Heistand joined with other religious leaders to effect a planned and peaceful integration of all public facilities in the city of Richmond.
In one area of change, the reform took place within a church-related institution. Several private schools in Virginia were racially segregated. "We had nine private schools in the Diocese of Virginia," Heistand said. "I was on the board of trustees for all nine schools, including St. Catherine's, a girl's school." Heistand reported that the announcement by the trustees of St. Catherine's that they would desegregate was met with some angry reaction.
"I got hate letters. My wife got obscene phone calls. My children were shunned at school. It lets you know, however, you were being effective," Heistand said.
By the time Martin Luther King was killed by an assassin's bullet, the struggle over racism had reached an impasse in Richmond.
"We had a lot of racially oriented vandalism in town around the time King was killed. I sang 'We Shall Overcome' so many times on the steps of the State Capitol I was hoarse," Heistand said.
As the Diocese of Virginia struggled with its racism, so did the rest of the church, Heistand said.
During the 1967 General Convention in Seattle, racial unrest was simmering. By August 11, 1965, the Watts riots in California had set the stage for what would be 257 racial uprisings throughout America over the next three years. Thirty-five people died in the Watts riots, the result of blacks' frustrations over not getting the financial and social equality promised by civil rights legislation. Instead, they continued to live in poverty, with high unemployment, in the face of tense and often overbearing police powers.
In 1967 Presiding Bishop John Hines proposed reshaping the entire General Convention program and urged taking the operating budget and using it to help communities such as Watts. Heistand said he agreed with the measure -- but he was disappointed with Episcopalians' reactions. "If you think that the upheaval and debate over women's ordination and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer were something, you should have seen this. People were angry," Heistand said. Some dioceses cut funding in protest of the presiding bishop's move.
In some ways, the racial differences remained unchanged, Heistand said. "This debate over Martin Luther King is nothing new."
Heistand said that he has always opposed moving the General Convention out of protest. "My question has been, 'Where would Jesus be?'" Heistand said. "I believe Jesus would come to Phoenix. He has always been where there was injustice, self-righteousness, prejudice. And there will always be injustice, self-righteousness, prejudice. It's part of our basic insecurity as human beings."
Heistand came to Arizona in 1969, as rector of St. Philip's in the Hills Church in Tucson.
"When I became bishop coadjutor, I had jurisdiction for the Episcopal Church in Navajoland, and I developed a love for the Indian people," Heistand said. "They are an amazing, generous, loving, humorous people. Theirs is an entirely different culture than ours." Yet they share a common quest for spirituality, for knowledge, for belief in God, he continued.
Developing a relationship with the Indians came naturally for Heistand, not so much because of his past in Richmond, but because of his goals for the church. Heistand had two major goals for the Diocese of Arizona when he became bishop in 1979: make it financially viable and increase teaching, stewardship, and evangelism.
Heistand puts his convictions on social justice issues into action. Episcopal Community Services (ECS) seeks to meet needs of the community, such as homelessness, hunger, and medical care for the Mexicans living on the Arizona-Mexico border. The ECS budget has grown from $5,000 15 years ago to $500,000 this year.
Heistand points to the relationship between the Diocese of Arizona and the Navajos as a symbol of how diversity can make a stronger church. He said that Bishop Steven Plummer of Navajoland said it best, "There is no Black church. No Indian church. No Hispanic church. Only one church, and I belong to it." Heistand asked Presiding Bishop Browning to invite the Navajoland Area Mission to be cohost of the 1991 General Convention.
Heistand is nearing retirement now. By June 1992, the 27,000-member Arizona diocese will have selected a replacement for Heistand, who hopes to move into a ministry closer to the people in the pews.
In 39 years in the ministry, Heistand said that the bulk of his life has been devoted to helping people "come to know Christ, to find out he really is an answer to their lives." It was what he learned in the Gospel that gave him a strong sense of social justice. "The Gospel really is an answer to a lot of the questions in life. It gives solid direction," he said.
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