We heard the news of some interesting Episcopal people this week. We were sorry to hear of the deaths of Grant Gallup and Flower Ross, and were glad to hear that John Lipscomb has found a spiritual home.
John Lipscomb, former Episcopal Bishop of Southwest Florida, was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday in the chapel of the Bethany Center spiritual retreat in Lutz, where he serves as spiritual director. The St. Petersburg Times reports:
“We’re happy that John has found his place,” said Jim DeLa, the Episcopal Diocese’s director of communications. “If this is it for him, God bless him.”
Twelve years ago, Lipscomb was elevated to lead nearly 40,000 Southwest Florida Episcopalians in a ceremony that included a chorus of trumpets at the Cathedral Church of St. Peter in St. Petersburg.
Over the next decade, he fought Parkinson’s disease and caught malaria on a mission to Kenya. In those same years, dissension tore his church apart. In 2003, he joined 19 bishops in a “statement of sorrow” over the naming of V. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay Episcopalian bishop.
Grant Gallup died on Thanksgiving Day. Fr. Gallup was a charter member of Integrity in Chicago and was chaplain to that chapter. He wrote for the Witness and Gallup was a charter member of Integrity’s first chapter, in Chicago, and served as chaplain to that chapter. For several years in the 1970s and ’80s, Gallup edited Integrity Forum. He served as vicar of St. Andrew’s, Chicago, and had been a missioner in Managua, Nicaragua, where he founded Casa Maria. Gallup wrote frequently for The Witness and other progressive journals and was author of a popular lectionary reflection called “Homily Grits.”
Episcopal News Service reports that Flower Robinson Ross, co-creator and champion of Education for Ministry, an educational program for lay people in ministry, died Nov. 30 in Asheville, North Carolina. She was 80.
Ross worked for the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama while her children were young and later for the School of Theology at the University of the South – Sewanee, where she married the Rev. Charles Winters in 1980. Along with Winters, she helped create Education for Ministry, which is still widely used throughout the Episcopal Church. Throughout the years, Ross traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, Australia and North America while serving as a trainer of mentors for Education for Ministry groups all over the world.
Ross and her husband joined the faculty of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, where they both taught until their retirement in 1994. They moved to Asheville to be close to friends and joined the Cathedral of All Souls. Ross remained active in lay ministry until her health deteriorated. The couple eventually moved to Deerfield Episcopal Retirement Community where Ross lived at the time of her death.