Episcopalians in Alabama will soon have a new leader. Rev. Richard Lawson will be ordained as the new bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama Saturday at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in downtown Birmingham. It’s a homecoming for the Alabama native who most recently served parishes in Denver and Memphis.
WBHM’s faith and culture reporter Vahini Shori spoke with the incoming bishop.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
When did you first decide to pursue congregational leadership?
I went to Auburn, War Eagle. My wife, Katherine, by the way, went to Alabama. So Roll Tide. When you're in my role, you try to love everybody.
At Auburn I, for some mysterious reason, was a religion major. And the big question for religion majors is what are you going to do with that major? And so I didn't know. I thought about law school. I thought of a couple of other things. And when I started dating my wife, she said, you ought to try the Episcopal Church. And I did and fell in love immediately and immediately knew that was my calling was to be a priest or a minister in that tradition.
What tradition did you grow up in?
United Methodist, a little bitty United Methodist church in Guntersville, Alabama, my hometown. The blessing of its size was that there were two of us in Sunday school — my best friend and I. So they could really focus on us and get that right. They always took great care of us. So it's a huge influence on my life.
In that little bitty Methodist church, I was given a Bible in which the words of Jesus were in red, and they sort of exploded off the page in this fiery red print, and it was dramatic. But from a very young age, and I've never lost this, that the words, the teachings, the stories of Jesus feel personal and dramatic to me.
Do you still have that Bible?
I do.
Since you've played a leadership role in the church, what's been your guiding philosophy as a leader?
First and foremost, relationships. I think everything for me can be boiled down to a relationship, even in the midst of great complexity or debate or decisions over how to take care of a building or how to relate better to a neighborhood or how share the gospel in a more compelling way or how build a budget. At the end of the day, it's all about relationships and trying to get relationships right.
When do you feel most successful in this work?
When someone tells me an authentic story.
Like what?
Well, it could be that someone tells me a story about something in their life that's particularly vulnerable or broken, or that feels broken to them. And why that feels like success, so to speak, is because it means the person trusts me, I think, or they would never speak so authentically and honestly about something so difficult.
I feel like I've done my job when I create a space where somebody tells you a joyful story. I just think God made human beings as storied creatures who are themselves storytellers. And I think that the deepest mysteries from our life, the most important parts of our lives cannot be communicated without a story.
When do you feel the most limited in your work?
When I'm with someone or a group of people who've been hurt by religion.
How do you work through that?
A lot of listening, you know, a lot of listening. And then when asked, but only when asked, an emphasis on God's gentleness and healing touch in addition to God's mystery. But that's when I feel most limited.
Are there any spiritual needs that you think are unique to Alabama?
Racial healing is enormous. I think looking at ways in which all of us can do our part, whatever that is, for the sake of racial healing. And I'm not even thinking about politics primarily, I'm thinking about the way in which people in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, and on their teams, plays, you name it, see the diversity of race and culture as the gift that God intends it to be.
If you can achieve only one thing in your time as bishop, what do you hope it is?
To have even more people than we do now in the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Alabama who can tell a great story about God's love in Christ and how they felt it personally and lived it in the world in relation to their neighbor.
