A Churchman's Farewell

A CHURCHMAN'S FAREWELL

Rector Harvey Guthrie closes fruitful decade at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

By DON FABER

NEWS RELIGION EDITOR

Fittingly for a man of his scope and vision, the Rev. Harvey Guthrie views impending retirement as a pro-active phase of his life.

In other words, not for him a bed of ease.

And appropriate to his ecumenical leadership, one of the last public acts for the rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church before his official leavetaking was that of keynoter at an interfaith gathering.

His address last Sunday to an impressive gathering of Washtenaw County clergy and lay leaders of all faiths summed up what congregations must be about these days.

For Harvey Guthrie, who came to his calling as a parish priest late in life, there is “a huge crisis in the U.S.

“Everyone feels disenfranchised,” he says. “It’s time to foster a new kind of ownership of the political process.”

And for Guthrie, the mechanism for community organization that brings people together is the Ann Arbor Interfaith Alliance Unison - a new group Guthrie helped to form.

The group’s purpose statement advocates forums for conversations among people of different religious traditions in the community and a context for responding to shared concerns.

Reduced to its basics, the Interfaith Alliance: Unison says “when we know each other, we can converse with each other. And when we talk on the same plane, we can work to alleviate common problems.”

The folks at St. Andrew’s are saying goodbye to Harvey and Doris Guthrie today with a “bash” at the Holiday Inn on Plymouth Rd. at 6 p.m.

Guthrie will preach his last sermon in the historic structure at 306 N. Division in Ann Arbor on June 4.

It promises to be a three-tissue event because parishioners are not going to let go without tears.

“He’s been an incredible administrator, a marvelous preacher and a conscientious shepherd of his flock,” says Fr. Alex Miller, assistant priest.

Parishioner Sharon MacBride, a member of St. Andrew’s office staff, says Guthrie “lives his theology and faith. To him, everybody has value.”

And that includes, of course, women. Guthrie was instrumental in pushing for the ordination of women before it came to be an accepted thing.

Guthrie came to St. Andrew’s in 1985, when the church was in turmoil from the policies and combative personality of his predecessor.

Guthrie guided St. Andrew’s in such a way that its membership is slightly up from a decade ago and it has a more active attendance. Its budget is between $500,000 and $600,000.

The retiring rector will be remembered, among other things, for two capital campaigns that transformed the church.

The first, undertaken in 1986-87. cost $700,000 and involved interior renovations such as conversion to barrier-free access.

The second campaign, recently concluded, cost $500,000 and involved re-arranging the chancel “to reflect the liturgy as we do it now,” according to Guthrie.

It was this "re-arranging” that caused some pain and bothered some traditionalists.

Guthrie believes the changes to chancel and altar did not violate the beauty of St. Andrew’s, that they in fact make a statement of value.

“We want to maintain a strong presence downtown of a church that’s alive and doing things,” he says.

Keeping the church’s doors open so that it isn’t viewed as a stuffy museum piece and spending money to keep the sanctuary an attractive, inspiring place of worship say to all concerned that “we value these things,” according to Guthrie.

The imaginative things with which St. Andrew’s is identified include its breakfast program for the homeless and its strong interest in a day shelter.

There’s more, of course. “We want to be involved,” says Guthrie, “in attempts to get at the systemic problems that make a shelter program necessary.”

Asked what he looks back on with pride, Guthrie is quick to say “liturgy.”

“This is a congregation,” he says, “that’s connected with what we celebrate in baptism and the eucharist as an inclusiveness. When we celebrate the eucharist, that’s who we are in relationship to God and to each other.”

That sense of inclusiveness, makes it perfectly logical “for us to feed humanity and to minister to gays and lesbians,” says Guthrie.

Oddly enough for a man eyeball to eyeball with retirement, St. An-‘ drew’s is Guthrie’s first and only preaching parish.

He came to Ann Arbor at age 60 after a productive life as an Old Testament scholar and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.

He is nationally known and well-respected in his church, having authored several books and served on various national and diocesan committees and commissions.

Guthrie is a man of towering intelligence, yet his manner is as' down-to-earth and engaging as any fellow at a Kiwanis picnic.

Guthrie on relationships: “You can’t have them (relationships) in the abstract They involve particularity of place, time, language, sharing.”

On retirement: “I intend to wind down and get the lay of the land, figuratively speaking, among the orange groves of southern California before getting back to serious writing.”

On contemporary worship: “We need to say that God is here in-this place now, and that we’re not simply recalling the halcyon days of another era in the history of St. Andrew’s.”

On following false prophets: “Don’t confuse cultural norms with divine mandates,” he says, citing a firebrand speaker in 1859 who assured his audiences that natural law and divine mandate supported the idea of slavery.

What would you like to say by way of farewell, the rector is asked.

“Be respectful of one another,” he says without hesitation.

Spoken from one who has gained his share of respect and affection.