| Charles Henry Brent (March 27th) was the outstanding figure of the Episcopal Church on the world scene for two decades—from 1909 until his death in 1929. Born in Ontario, Canada in 1862, he was educated at the University of Toronto and ordained a priest in 1887. He emigrated to the United States in 1888 to work in Boston. In 1901, Brent was elected by the House of Bishops to be Missionary Bishop of the Philippines. There he campaigned vigorously against the opium traffic, an effort he expanded to the Asian continent. In 1909, he became President of the world Opium Conference in Shanghai, and he also represented the USA on the League of Nation’s Narcotics Committee.
During World War I, Brent served as Senior Chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces. In 1918, he accepted election as Bishop of Western New York, having declined three previous elections as a bishop in order to stay with his duties in the Philippines. In this new position he was freer to pursue what had always been his main interest and focus for ministry: Christian unity. After attending the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, he led the Episcopal Church’s focus on ecumenism. This culminated in the General Convention’s call for the first World Conference on Faith and Order, held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1927 with Bishop Brent serving as its President. A prominent historian described Brent as “a saint of disciplined mental vigor, one whom soldiers were proud to salute and whom children were happy to play with, who could dominate a parliament and minister to an invalid, a priest and bishop who gloried in the heritage of his Church, yet who stood among all Christian brothers as one who served . . . He was everywhere an ambassador of Christ.” |
