J. ROBERT WRIGHT

WRIGHT --J. Robert. The Rev. Canon J. Robert Wright, a leading Episcopal Church theologian, strategist, professor, author, and ambassador in the Christian Ecumenical Movement, died at his home in Manhattan in the late afternoon of January 12, 2022. While Canon Wright's primary work was as a professor and mentor to countless leaders in The Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion, he also served as a behind the scenes advisor to multiple Presiding Bishops of The Episcopal Church, as well as a theological consultant to the Episcopal Church Ecumenical Office from 1982 into the twenty-first century. The Right Reverend Frank T. Griswold, 25th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church said: "Father Wright's ecumenism included a profound knowledge of and warm relations with the Churches of the East. His presence and wise counsel during my visits to the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Moscow, and the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, helped to make them much more than a state visit but true occasions of fraternal encounter and exchange." Canon Wright was particularly interested in the official dialogues of The Episcopal Church with the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He was a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the United States from 1971. Canon Wright represented The Episcopal Church and the whole Anglican Communion on the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission from 1983 to 1991. He was a member of the Anglican- Eastern Orthodox Consultation in the United States from 1972. In 2007, Canon Wright was awarded the St. Augustine's Cross from then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in honor of his remarkable service in ecumenical work. One year later, when Roman Catholic Cardinal Edward Egan hosted Pope Benedict XVI in New York, the Cardinal made it possible for the Pope to honor Canon Wright with a papal pontifical medal. With respect to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Canon Wright was awarded the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchal cross, and four other Patriarchal crosses from the heads of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Of all of J. Robert Wright's contributions to the Ecumenical Movement, however, none has been more significant than his path-breaking work in Anglican-Lutheran relations: the achievement of full communion (the sharing of sacraments and ordained ministers) between The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He was the principal Episcopal architect of Called to Common Mission (1999) which allowed the two Churches to declare officially full communion at a joint service at the Washington National Cathedral on January 6, 2001. J. Robert Wright was born in Carbondale, IL, on October 20, 1936. He received his B. A. in 1958 from the University of the South, Sewanee, his M.Div. from the General Theological Seminary in 1963, and his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1967. From 1966 to 1968 he was Instructor in Church History at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. And from 1968 to 2012 he served as the longest-tenured faculty member at the General Theological Seminary in New York City, on his retirement being granted the title of St. Mark's Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Emeritus, in recognition of his stature as a revered teacher and mentor at the Seminary. He was the author of two scholarly monographs and hundreds of published articles, and he was the editor of fourteen additional books. In 2000 Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold named him Historiographer of The Episcopal Church, he was awarded five honorary degrees, and in 1990 was appointed as the Honorary Theologian to the Episcopal Bishop of New York. A public thanksgiving service for the life of Canon Wright has been scheduled by the General Theological Seminary for 11am on May 19, 2022, in the Seminary's Chapel of the Good Shepherd. His ashes will be interred in the Columbarium of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City. Canon Wright's reflections on and sharing with others the complex yet noble character of The Episcopal Church, the remarkable way in which he combined American, Anglican, and catholic Christianity, will beckon forward a new generation of ecumenists on a sure path that will be a work of time, of friendship, and of scholarship.