Sean Rowe, a 49-year-old bishop from western Pennsylvania, on Wednesday became the youngest person ever elected to the leadership of the Episcopal Church.
He immediately issued a sobering plea for the church, which is facing divisions and chronic membership losses, to confront an “existential crisis” that he compared to the collapse of the steel industry in his native Rust Belt.
Rowe, who leads two small dioceses along Lake Erie, succeeds Bishop Michael Curry, the first African-American to hold the position. Curry’s nine-year term ends Nov. 1. The presiding bishop serves as the church’s chief pastor, president and CEO.
Rowe was elected on the first ballot in the House of Bishops, which met behind closed doors Wednesday at the Episcopal Cathedral in Louisville. Rowe received 89 votes, the required majority, while other votes were widely spread among the other four candidates.
The House of Representatives, composed of clergy and laity, confirmed his election with 95% of the vote, followed by strong applause.
The only presiding bishop to assume the post at a younger age than Rowe was the first, William White, who was 41 when he served briefly in 1789, when there were no leadership elections.
Rowe was 32 in May 2007 when he was elected bishop of the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania, based in Erie. For nearly a dozen years, he was the youngest bishop in the Episcopal Church.
In 2019, he also began overseeing the Diocese of Western New York, based in Buffalo. The neighboring dioceses, with fewer than 10,000 members, have worked together on ministries in recent years.
He said this type of collaboration is just one example of how the church must adapt to the new reality.
“It’s not a strong statement to say that we are facing an existential crisis,” Rowe told the House of Representatives after his election. “It’s not because our church is dying, or because we’ve lost faith in God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, but because the world around us has changed and continues to change. It’s constantly changing. And God is calling us ever deeper into the unknown.”
The Episcopal Church is an offshoot of the Anglican Church in the United States and has been the spiritual home for many American founding fathers and presidents.
But like other mainline Protestant denominations, membership in the Episcopal Church has been declining for decades. From a peak of 3.4 million in 1959, it had fallen to 1.9 million when Curry was elected leader in 2015 and has fallen to fewer than 1.6 million by 2022. The average Sunday church attendance for Episcopalians nationwide was 614,241 in 2015; by 2022, it had fallen to 372,952.
Rowe compared the challenges the church faced to the collapse of the steel industry, where his grandparents had found work when he was growing up in Pennsylvania.
“I’ve seen things I love disappear,” he said. “I have seen everything I knew evaporate.”
He cited tensions within the denomination, without giving specific details, and called on members to be kinder and more forgiving toward one another, calling on them to “turn their anger at injustice rather than turn it inward toward one another.”
Still, he offered reassurance by quoting the late Catholic monk and author Thomas Merton — a favorite son of host state Kentucky — about operating in faith in the face of uncertainty.
“You don’t have to know exactly what’s happening” to face challenges “with courage, faith and hope,” he said.
On a practical level, Rowe called on the church to avoid top-heavy structures and direct more of its funds and resources to local and diocesan ministries.
A native of Sharon, Pennsylvania, Rowe graduated from nearby Grove City College in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in history.
He graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary in 2000, after which he returned to western Pennsylvania.
The bishop is known for his research and work in organizational learning and adaptive performance in the church. He earned a doctorate in organizational learning and leadership from Gannon University in Erie in 2014.
After the election, Curry praised his successor at a press conference, calling Rowe “both a vision and a sense of the mechanisms that will help us get there.”
Curry urged delegates to remain optimistic in his opening remarks at the General Assembly on Sunday.
“This Episcopal Church is stronger, more enduring and has a future that God has determined and designed,” he said. “Don’t worry about this church. Don’t cry or complain. Just roll up your sleeves and let’s get started. That is our future.”
Throughout his ministry, Curry has been an outspoken leader on a range of challenging issues, including racial reconciliation, climate change, immigration policy, and LGBTQ+ equality. Among his pet causes: establishing ecumenical summer day camps for children, creating networks of child care providers, and encouraging major investments in urban neighborhoods.
In 2018, he became a global star with a moving sermon at the televised royal wedding of Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Curry, 71, has been battling multiple health issues since May 2023, when he was hospitalized for treatment of internal bleeding and an irregular heartbeat. In March, doctors successfully implanted a pacemaker as part of ongoing treatment.
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