Interview, Fireside Chat
The Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
- Michael Curry is the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, the first African-American to hold the position in the church's history.
- Born in 1953, Curry grew up in Buffalo, New York, spending summers in rural North Carolina within a family of descendants of enslaved people and sharecroppers.
- Curry's formative environment was defined by a "religious womb" where faith was culturally ubiquitous, influenced simultaneously by his father (an Episcopal priest) and his grandmother (a Baptist domestic worker and sharecropper's daughter).
- His grandmother, who worked as a domestic worker and did not complete high school, instilled the principle that "education was emancipation," frequently quoting, "If it's in your head, nobody can take it away from you."
- The death of Curry's mother in middle school necessitated a navigation of grief through faith, with his father and grandmother providing a "benign loving power" to survive difficult terrain.
- During college in the mid-1970s, Curry initially intended to pursue law or government work, including volunteering for Robert F. Kennedy, but shifted vocations after studying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s writings.
- Curry graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1978 and established the "Crisis Control Ministry" in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to address racial segregation and homelessness by convening clergy from divided East and West communities.
- In 2000, Curry was elected Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina, becoming the first African-American bishop in the American South, an event that surprised some observers who previously believed such a election was impossible ("hell would freeze over").
- During his 15-year tenure as Bishop of North Carolina, Curry and the diocese strategically appointed an assistant bishop of color to lead racial justice and anti-racism initiatives to avoid centering the burden on a single Black leader.
- Curry navigated significant internal church tension regarding the 2003 election of openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, balancing honesty about his support for marriage equality with space for dissenting views.
- The diocese supported the 2013 Moral Monday movement led by William Barber solely on moral grounds, urging state legislators to apply the principle of treating others as they wish to be treated when voting on legislation.
- In 2015, Curry was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, a role he recognized as coming at a time of severe tension with the wider global Anglican Communion, which comprises 85 million members.
- A 2015 meeting at Canterbury Cathedral involving global Anglican leaders reached a "nuanced" decision allowing the Episcopal Church to remain in the communion despite deep disagreements over marriage equality and ordination, resulting in specific restrictions on the Episcopal Church's representation of the wider communion.
- At the Canterbury meeting, Curry emphasized that while he represented the North American church, he spoke to the African primates as brothers and sisters, asserting that the love guiding the church's decisions on LGBTQ+ rights was the same love required for all people.
- Curry was invited to deliver the homily at the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle by the Archbishop of Canterbury via an intermediary staff member who tracked him down while he was traveling.
- Due to strict confidentiality protocols, Curry could not discuss the invitation or the sermon details with most staff or his wife for several weeks.
- The royal couple selected the text "Song of Solomon" for the wedding, a book of love poetry that Curry described as a "remarkable text" for addressing the power and greatness of love.
- Curry's sermon at the royal wedding addressed approximately 2 billion viewers globally and became a defining moment of his tenure, emphasizing the capacity of love to navigate profound societal differences.