The Backyard Missionary

If he had been standing on the same sidewalk the night before, the Rt. Rev. Frederick Houk Borsch would have been asking for trouble. The gritty MacArthur Park district where one of his priests has opened a small storefront mission is one of the most crime-ridden areas in Los Angeles. By day, the neighborhood bustles with hard-working immigrants from Mexico and Central America eking out a living in this faded precinct of the City of Angels. But as the sun sets, shadowy tendrils curl across storefronts and down alleys, entangling the light until it pales and finally suffocates. In the dark hours before light’s resurrection, when footsteps tread on broken glass and a palpable dread charges the air, families retreat behind bolted doors. Store windows are shuttered behind galvanized steel. Gone are the bright eyes of immigrant children. Gone are the tired eyes of street vendors. This is a time of illicit eyes, of eyes glazed by alcohol and dope, of desperate women turning tricks.

Yes, the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles thought, this was just the place to bring his guest for lunch. Borsch wanted to show him that here, in the midst of urban wretchedness, could be found holy ground--a small storefront chapel called Pueblo Nuevo de Jesucristo, (New People of Jesus Christ). Just then, the limousine cruised to the curb, the door opened and out stepped the Most Reverend and Right Honorable George L. Carey, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

For the next hour, over homemade enchiladas, rice and beans, the primate of all England and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion (which includes the Episcopal Church) listened to immigrants tell stories of lives redeemed and hopes rekindled. The mission provided jobs for more than 40 neighborhood residents by opening a thrift store and starting a for-profit janitorial service. Sixteen workers invested $500 each in the business and became cooperative owners with a voice in its operation.

Carey was deeply moved, as Borsch had hoped that he would be, especially by the work of the Rev. Philip Lance, the Episcopal priest who started it all. Carey, an evangelical Anglican at heart, was still singing Lance’s praises as he and Borsch climbed into the limousine to motor to their next stop. Borsch was satisfied, but only to a point. Inside, he was struggling with a tough question: Should he disclose the rest of the story? Then, in an act that characterizes his 10-year episcopacy, the fifth bishop of Los Angeles turned to the 103rd archbishop of Canterbury and uttered a single declarative sentence that turned the experience topsy: “You know,” Borsch told Carey, “Philip is a gay man.”

That’s Fred Borsch, L.A.’s “other” bishop. No fire and brimstone from heaven. No shouts from the mountaintop. Just conviction forged in the fires of faith and reason, vented not as Lazarus back to tell them all, but as a scholar-bishop’s invitation to dialogue. He’s not a household word like his friend, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles. He’s far less known than Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong of Newark, N.J., whose writings challenging the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Jesus are concepts his critics say border on heresy. Yet Borsch, 63, is indisputably one of the leaders of the Anglican Communion worldwide and is its point man on an issue that will determine the future of the institution for generations: He is spearheading the efforts of a church long known as a bastion of the white elite, of

English Christianity, to reach out to people of all colors and cultures. It’s a mission he was chosen for in no small part because of his leadership in the six-county Los Angeles Diocese.

But along the way, this deeply thoughtful man, known for his willingness to listen to others and his dislike of confrontation, has also earned a reputation for controversy by welcoming gay men and lesbians into the church. Traditionalist Episcopalians are profoundly disturbed by his interpretation of church canons and Scripture to allow the ordination not only of celibate gay men and lesbians, but also those, like Lance, who are in committed, monogamous relationships. It’s a stance that has put Borsch at odds with the vast majority of Anglican bishops around the world, and angered many congregants at home. Yet he soldiers on, in his own way. One day it may be a quiet aside to the archbishop of Canterbury. Or a stroll with Mayor Richard Riordan to discuss a living wage for low-paid workers. Or it may be a three-day, 50-mile walk along the Southern California coast with young people of the diocese just so they can hang out with their bishop and “look for God together.”

*

It is early morning and the bishop slips into his Cathedral Church. No one seems to be around. Light streams through a clerestory window. He settles into the bishop’s throne and begins silently reading the church’s Morning Prayer. Above him, the towering oak throne, or cathedra, rises 25 feet. Its canopy is inlaid with eight intricately carved oak panels, each depicting a New Testament story. Had a staff member come across Borsch, both might have been startled. When the diocese’s $14-million Cathedral Center of St. Paul was opened in Echo Park in 1994, Borsch at first refused to allow the diocese’s throne inside. He was not about to “lord it over” his flock. Rather, he wanted to be seen as a servant bishop. Only later did he relent and allow the throne inside, out of deference to his predecessors. But no one ever saw him sit in it. “I don’t sit at the big throne in the church because I don’t like the image of it,” he will say. Then comes one of his typically surprising asides. “Occasionally, while I’m by myself, I’ll go and sit there with my prayer book in hand. You know what? It’s incredibly comfortable!” He smiles. “You should try it some time.”

Isn’t there more to it? What’s wrong with a tangible connection in the succession of the apostles? “I think that’s why I do it. I think that’s exactly right.”

The truth be known, Borsch is not one to insist on hierarchical privilege or his episcopal dignity. “He is a simple man,” says the Rev. George Regas, rector emeritus at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. “He isn’t impressed with himself in that high and lofty role of being the bishop.” In a church so steeped in tradition that bishops on formal occasions are addressed as “Right Reverend Sir,” Borsch prefers simply to be called Fred. He loves telling the story of his first ceremonial procession into church after becoming bishop. A parishioner offered him advice: “Bishop, when you get to the front, do not reverence [bow before] the altar.” Borsch responded with disbelief. “What do you mean don’t reverence the altar? I reverenced the altar when I was a deacon. I reverenced the altar when I was a priest. Just because I’m a bishop doesn’t mean that I’m not going to reverence the altar of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!” The parishioner deadpanned. “Bishop, if you reverence the altar your miter will fall off.”

For Borsch, God is not an abstract God of the seminary, or confined to the cloister. Rather, the God in which Borsch lives and moves beckons him to live and move in the streets of Southern California. “He really has a willingness to engage the Episcopal diocese with the general community, especially seeking ways to solve and deal with many of the emerging problems of our time,” Mahony says. The Rev. Malcolm Boyd, diocesan writer in residence, says he has “never known anyone where servanthood is woven through a life so completely.” When Los Angeles police recently handcuffed a fully vested African American priest at gunpoint while searching his Episcopal parish in Canoga Park for two suspects, Borsch requested--and got--an explicit public apology from the Police Department. When the Los Angeles riots erupted in 1992, Borsch was asked by Warren Christopher, soon to be U.S. secretary of state, to organize testimony from religious leaders before a commission Christopher chaired to investigate the Los Angeles Police Department.

Borsch also led the ecclesiastical charge to get the City Council to enact an ordinance, over Riordan’s veto, requiring city contractors to pay workers not simply the minimum wage, but a higher “living wage.” Union organizers still remember Borsch in front of a Beverly Hills hotel picketing for higher wages for workers. “He gets a light in his eye when he talks about this stuff,” says attorney Madeline Janis-Aparicio, director of the Los Angeles Living Wage Coalition. Usually, however, Borsch works behind the scenes. When an airport worker was fired for joining the campaign, an urgent call was placed to the bishop. Within an hour, he had faxed a letter to the fired woman’s superior. As the Rev. Dick Gillett, Borsch’s minister of social justice, recalled, the woman’s supervisor asked who the letter was from. Told it was from the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, the “somewhat rattled” supervisor reinstated the worker within 24 hours.

Two months after Riordan’s March 1997 veto of the first living wage ordinance, Borsch spent 45 minutes strolling the Princeton University campus with Riordan during a chance meeting, listening and occasionally raising a philosophical point he hoped the mayor would consider in rethinking his opposition. “He was in a kind of philosophical mode and reflective, and I found that a much better way to approach the issue than to make some kind of appeal to him,” Borsch says. Riordan remembers the walk vividly. “I must say I felt that God was listening to me.”

The following year the living-wage ordinance was extended without Riordan’s opposition. Political considerations may have been uppermost in the mayor’s thinking, but Borsch believes that Riordan’s Catholic sense of social justice played a part.

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Borsch grew up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., the son of lifelong Episcopalians Reuben and Pearl Houk Borsch, who came from farm families in southern Illinois. His father played baseball with a St. Louis Cardinals farm club before becoming a Rhodes Scholar and successful attorney. As a youngster, Fred Borsch never understood why his father gave up baseball to study at Oxford University, but it was a path he would follow. The young Borsch loved sports, especially baseball. As an undergraduate at Princeton, he considered a career in law or teaching college English. Whatever he did, he wanted to make the world better. “I began to feel more and more the real heart of that was related to faith, to giving people hope in life,” he says. The seed may have been planted years earlier by his parish priest in Hinsdale, Ill., the late Rt. Rev. Donald Hallock, who later became a bishop. Borsch, then a young acolyte, recalls Hallock asking him after one Thursday morning service if he had ever thought of becoming a priest. At the time his answer was no. But Borsch never forgot the question. “I saw something in him that I admired, something in his ministry,” Borsch says.

He went on to earn a bachelor’s in English literature from Princeton in 1957 and a bachelor’s in theology from Oxford in 1959. On one trip home from school, while in a grocery store checkout line with his mother, he met the young Barbara Edgeley Sampson. They were married in 1960, the same year he graduated from General Theological Seminary in New York and was ordained. In the years since, he has earned a master’s in theology from Oxford and, in 1966, a PhD from the University of Birmingham in England, written 15 books, and become a trustee of Princeton and a director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. He also has served as dean of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, professor of religion at Princeton and dean of its chapel. Yet true to his childhood influences, he still speaks as easily about baseball and canoeing in the Canadian wilderness with his wife and three sons as he does about religious art and the metaphysical poetry of 17th century English poet and priest George Herbert. He would just as soon wear a Dodger baseball cap as a miter. And he keeps a Foosball game in his office, a few feet from his kneeler.

The church Borsch began ministering to nearly four decades ago was vastly different from the one he oversees now. In America, the Episcopal Church has long been the church of movers and shakers, the power elites. Once dubbed “the Republican party at prayer,” the church has produced a disproportionate share of American presidents and still wields influence greater than expected for its size. National membership is at 2.4 million, compared to 4.5 million Roman Catholics in the Los Angeles Archdiocese alone. In recent years, however, with the surge of non-Anglo immigrants, the church has begun reaching out as never before. It’s an effort that meshes smoothly with Borsch’s vision. He has been broadening the church’s base since his days as dean of Princeton chapel, said former university trustee and retired Massachusetts Bishop John B. Coburn. “Everybody belonged to God’s kingdom--and he was going to do the best he could to see that they knew it.” When Borsch arrived in Southern California, he found an abundance of opportunity: More than 100 languages are spoken in his diocese, which is the most ethnically and culturally diverse diocese in the Anglican Communion.

The most striking demonstration of his commitment was building the church’s new cathedral center in Echo Park, an inner-city neighborhood, instead of the suburbs. “There were some naysayers in the beginning,” said Kristi Wallace, executive director of the diocese’s cathedral center corporation. “They said, ‘Oh, it’s so dangerous there,’ or ‘We want a big cathedral.’ ” Today, the new “working cathedral” is not only the seat of the bishop in a modest cathedral church, but the site of a continuation high school run by the Los Angeles Unified School District. There are programs for young people, the elderly and immigrants, including an Episcopal credit union, five hot meals a week for the elderly, groceries on Friday and a nonprofit agency called Hillsides Family Program, which hopes to end poverty and keep young people out of gangs. Riordan is among those singing the church’s praises. “All leaders should ask themselves one question before they act: Is this in the best interests of the poor? I think that’s what Fred Borsch did.”

Other results of the church’s outreach are easy to find. In the last 10 years, 11 new Hispanic congregations have been added to the diocese. The number of priests involved in the Hispanic ministry has grown from four to 23, including six women. Other ethnic ministries have grown, particularly among Asians and Asian Americans. Five other Episcopal dioceses in the U.S. have developed five-year ethnic ministry programs.

Given that record, Archbishop Carey selected Borsch to stimulate the church’s outreach effort internationally, choosing him to lead study and discussion of the issue at the bishops’ once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, held last August in Canterbury, England. It was a high honor--just four bishops from more than 800 worldwide were chosen to lead such “sections” on various topics at the conference. Yet for all the success, Borsch worries that more isn’t being done, both for multicultural ministries as well as outreach to youth. He worries, too, about his church’s future, even if its declining membership, like other old-line Protestant churches, appears to have bottomed out. He thinks that if his church can thrive in metropolitan Los Angeles in the midst of such diversity, it could become a model for the larger church and, perhaps, even for the nation.

*

Borsch is seated at a modest wooden table in his office at the Cathedral Center. He is wearing a magenta shirt and clerical collar signifying his ecclesiastical rank. A pectoral cross hangs from his neck. He speaks of a recent airliner crash. He thinks of the horror, of the families left behind. Why? “I don’t understand. Maybe help me to understand, but I still don’t understand. Creation seems to be so costly.” He pauses a moment, absent-mindedly fingering his bishop’s ring. “Then I wonder what that must be for God.”

Years earlier, Borsch survived a plane crash. His DC-10 shot off the end of the runway and careened into Boston harbor, shearing off the cockpit and throwing the pilots into the freezing water. Two people drowned. Where was God?

In his latest book, “Outrage and Hope: A Bishop’s Reflections in Times of Change and Challenge,” Borsch says there are usually two reactions to tragedy--Theology A and Theology B. “Theology A goes like this: If the children survive, if my doctor gives me a good report, if my business thrives, then I will give thanks and trust in God. Theology B says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . you are with me. “ Borsch opts for Theology B. Whatever the circumstances, God is present. But God’s purposes are not on the surface of events. Moreover, the idea that God can be directed by prayers and action borders on superstition.

Such questions have driven Borsch since his days as a young seminarian. He’s still looking for answers. “I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of Herbert as a poet. He is so clearly engaged all the time in that dialogical relationship. Sometimes it’s a three-part voice, his voice talking to himself. So it’s his dialogue with himself, but at the same time talking with God.” For Borsch, reading, and writing, poetry is a means of self-discovery, the chance for an epiphany, when a pinprick of insight and light pierces the dark night of the soul. “Whether or not one holds God responsible, who else are you going to talk to about it, and wonder with about it?”

*

As the limousine carrying Borsch and the archbishop pulled away from the storefront mission on that spring day in 1996, Borsch waited for Carey’s response to the revelation that the priest he had just met was gay. Carey was the picture of British reserve. At the next stop, however, the archbishop was strikingly conciliatory, telling well-wishers in Pasadena that he was “struggling” with the issue of gay priests.

It’s a struggle that has torn at the fabric of the church. Traditionalists and social conservatives view proposals for blessing same sex unions and ordaining gay men and lesbians who are in a committed, monogamous relationship as a threat to family values and an affront to biblical morality--if not an invitation to hell. Gays, lesbians and their straight supporters see it as the spirit of the overarching inclusive love of God working in their midst. Borsch is at the center of that debate. Growing up, he viewed homosexuality as “unnatural, a bad thing, even dangerous.” His change of heart has as much to do with getting to know gays and lesbians as his reading of Scripture.

Although he has not sanctioned the blessing of same sex unions, he has not stopped priests from conducting them. Gay men and lesbians in committed same sex relationships have also been ordained.

At the Lambeth Conference last August, the world’s Anglican bishops voted 526 to 70 to oppose both and said “homosexual practice” is incompatible with biblical morality. Borsch voted against the resolution, Carey voted for it. Borsch believes that many bishops who favored it lacked pastoral experience with gays. “I knew people in a committed relationship for a long time who were very strong members of the church, who were friends of our family, good to my children,” he said. “We did the work of Christ with them.”

Which is not to say that he’s convinced everyone, even in his own diocese. Some parishes and priests have publicly decried the ordination of gay men and lesbians, and some members have gone elsewhere to worship. The Rev. Jose Poch, rector of St. David’s Church in North Hollywood, says he “would love to see a more orthodox bishop. I can’t hide that. I would like to see a man who would uphold the Scriptures as they are written . . . a true defender of the faith.” Even so, Poch gives Borsch high marks for listening, saying the bishop “always makes me feel that I’m heard, that I’m cared for.” The Rev. David Anderson, rector of St. James Church in Newport Beach, wishes Borsch would take a firm stand on the blessing of same sex unions, rather than simply turning a blind eye to the practice. “I think it’s a bishop’s job to ascertain what is truth and then promulgate it and deal with the consequences,” Anderson says.

Borsch is patient with the disharmony but remains intellectually tough. “If we’re going to share our faith with others, if we’re going to be wise and enlightened about how we go about our ministry in today’s world, we have to be wise and enlightened about the way we use our Bibles,” he says. That doesn’t mean always taking the Bible literally. “The Bible doesn’t know the answer to all kinds of questions.” As for his laying down the law and dealing with the consequences, Borsch asks in a recent paper, “What would happen to the overall teaching ministry of the church if all bishops emphasized the guardian role of their office in such a way that the faith was preserved yet not also boldly proclaimed and interpreted? Would that be faithful to tradition?” The church, he notes, remains unbending in its condemnation of sexual promiscuity, whether among heterosexuals or homosexuals, as well as pornography and sexual abuse. “How we use our sexuality is a very important aspect of our human life. That’s one of the reasons why I would say that I’m sort of conservative on the subject. But I also think it’s only a part of human life and that part of the brokenness of humanity--we’re all flawed human beings.”

It is an approach that brings admiration from liberal priests such as the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., rector of All Saints in Pasadena. “I think Fred Borsch is a radical disciple of God’s inclusive love. He’s not dramatic, but he will stay true to that radical discipleship no matter what.” Still, the backlash has been fierce. “Sometimes he receives some very unattractive mail,” says his wife, Barbara. “Some mail, you know, is hurtful. And he is a person who does get hurt.” Borsch manages to handle it with equanimity, but not without cost. His position, he says, was one reason why he was not a candidate for presiding bishop of the national church. “In the present climate--not just in the church but in society--it’s very difficult if you have this pastoral concern for gay and lesbian people. If you want to say, ‘Well, look, it’s a mystery as to why people have that orientation, but they do and therefore they must be God’s children,’ then you’re evil or you’re wicked or something.”

*

When Borsch left Princeton to become bishop, students and colleagues presented him with a banner of a burning bush. It recalled the story in Exodus 3 of Moses’ momentous encounter with God. In that account, Moses is going about the commonplace business of tending sheep when he comes upon a bush that is ablaze, yet not consumed by the fire. Curious, he moves closer for a better look. It is then that Moses realizes that the ordinary is imbued with the extraordinary. The particular and transcendent are joined. Moses hears the voice of God: “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

A decade has passed since Borsch was presented the banner. Now, on the 10th anniversary of his consecration as bishop, he is paying pastoral calls on Episcopal schools, parishes and other church-related institutions in his diocese. At one stop, someone takes his snapshot. He has removed his shoes and stepped onto a labyrinth path in the courtyard of St. Anselm’s of Canterbury Episcopal Church in Garden Grove. Walking the labyrinth is an ancient spiritual exercise. In Christianity, labyrinths are believed to date back at least to 13th century France at Chartres Cathedral. Seekers begin at the edge of the labyrinth and slowly walk its spiraling path, praying or chanting silently, until they reach the rosette in the center. The center represents God, and there they may sit in rest or contemplation.

There is nothing special about the labyrinth at St. Anselm’s. It is simply a pattern painted on common cement. But like Moses, for whom common ground was made holy by the presence of God, Borsch sees the church striving for “divine awareness” wherever it finds itself. “One of the glories of this church is that it’s always recognizing that it’s all God’s world,” Borsch has said. Borsch takes one step, then another. He is seeking an encounter with the holy in the commonplace. Over time, the labyrinthine path, like the diocese he leads, bears the burdens of young people and the elderly, citizens and immigrants, gay men and lesbians, single and married, business executives and low-income workers. They, too, remove their shoes and, like their barefoot bishop, slowly journey to the center.