Dcn Susan Erickson

Dear Siblings in Christ,

Today I’m reminded that I’m surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses.” That’s because today the Episcopal Church recognizes Charles Henry Brent (1862-1929), the First Episcopal Missionary Bishop to the Philippines. Brent worked in the Philippines from 1901-1918. A little over a decade later, my great-aunt Signe Erickson arrived as a missionary in the Philippines, where she taught in a school for women. Signe did not leave her post when Japanese forces occupied the Philippines at the start of WWII; eventually she took refuge in a remote area of the islands with a small group of fellow Evangelical missionaries, including families with children. Though protected by locals, they were eventually found out and executed by Japanese soldiers.

A rather obscure little book by Scott Walker published in 2009, The Edge of Terror, tells the story of Signe and the other missionaries, known as the “Hopevale Martyrs.” My brother somehow got his hands on a used copy, and it told me a few things I’d never known about my great-aunt.

Bishop Brent, on the other hand, was one of the best-known churchmen of his time, even appearing on the cover of Time Magazine. General Pershing, whom Brent baptized, appointed him Chief of Chaplains during WWI. Bishop Brent was passionate about promoting the unity of the whole Church.  He attended the famous 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh and was one of the principal organizers of the 1927 Lausanne Conference on Faith and Order, which promoted ecumenism and which continues to this day.

Signe and Bishop Brent were formed in two different traditions, Evangelical and Anglican. Signe was a first-generation American whose parents eked out a modest living on a small farm in Pennsylvania. It speaks to her gifts and resolve that she attended college and seminary. Bishop Brent served in parishes in Boston (where, incidentally, Signe travelled to attend Gordon College). He published a number of books during his lifetime and was once considered for the post of dean at the General Theological Seminary. Brent, in short, was something of an ecclesiastical luminary, which Signe definitely was not.

But both my great-aunt and Bishop Brent took their deep personal faith into the world to serve people marginalized and oppressed by poverty, both here in America and abroad. They fearlessly took up their cross and followed Christ. My prayer is that I am given grace to keep their paths in my mind and heart in the days ahead.

Bishop Brent wrote the following well-known collect from the BCP office of Morning Prayer (BCP 58, 101):

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace:  So clothe us in your spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.

— Dcn Susan