c. 2005 Religion News Service

BOSTON _ One year ago, when Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” was stirring sharp debate about anti-Semitism, Rabbi Ronne Friedman marveled that an Episcopal priest would convene a public panel on such a touchy issue and include him among the speakers.

But what impressed Friedman even more than the Rev. Dr. Samuel T. Lloyd III’s staging of a forum at Trinity Church was the way his Christian colleague _ who takes the pulpit as sean of Washington National Cathedral Feb. 20 _ handled religious conservatives who rose to disagree with him.

“He doesn’t shut down,” said Friedman, who serves as senior rabbi at Temple Israel, Boston’s largest Jewish congregation. “He acknowledged and affirmed people with a less critical and more emotional response to the film … His ability to affirm, not to alienate, those with a different point of view was moving for me to see.”

Across this region where Lloyd has served a historic, landmark institution for 11 years, impressions of the man bear a remarkable consistency. Among adoring church members and ideological foes alike, Lloyd stands out as a leader with a rare knack for taking firm positions on social issues and still warmly embracing those on the opposite side.

In moving to Washington, Lloyd, 54, may need to marshal every skill in his toolbox for the new task at hand. In his grip lay the reins of an institution that has for almost a century brought together statesmen, tourists and those on all sides of Anglicanism. But with the nation divided by a controversial war and the Anglican Communion sharply split over homosexuality, even a priest with a reputation as a reconciler knows he has his work cut out for him inside the Capitol Beltway.

“When I’m in the pulpit, I have a responsibility to be very careful about a consistent pattern of what might be called `partisan preaching,”’ Lloyd said. “The challenge (at the National Cathedral) will be to keep the preached word at a level of discourse that goes beyond vague generalities.”

In Boston, Lloyd has never had to fear the label of wishy-washy.

The architectural treasure that is Trinity Church in Copley Square has become on his watch an urban icon for the advance of interfaith dialogue, especially as the venue played host to numerous services and discussions after Sept. 11, 2001.

On subtler days, Lloyd has quietly used the church’s muscle to push through affordable housing legislation, according to Gary Sandison, special assistant to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. And few could ignore where Lloyd has stood on the hot-button issue of homosexuality. In 2003, he supported the nomination of New Hampshire’s gay bishop, the Rev. Gene Robinson, and in 2004, he presided for his first time over the blessing of a same-sex union.

Once in Washington, Lloyd says he will consult with Washington Bishop John Bryson Chane before deciding whether to bless same-sex unions at the Cathedral. Meanwhile, critics of his track record thus far are sure to watch closely as he steps into a far more prominent fish bowl.

“He will do a fine job of welcoming everybody to the table,” said the Rev. Bill Murdoch, dean of the New England Convocation of the Anglican Communion Network, an orthodox movement within Anglicanism. “My concern … is that just providing everybody a place is not the only responsibility of the church. The church is to be a welcoming place, of course, but it is also to proclaim the truth the apostles once delivered.”

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Murdoch criticized Lloyd for “offering teaching that was contrary to the global, Anglican Communion” as codified at the Lambeth Conference of 1998. He added that he hopes Lloyd in his new role will “exercise the restraint that the global Communion has called for in this time of struggle.”

Though he has spent a comfortable decade in progressive Boston, Lloyd is no stranger to viewpoints that challenge his own.

His soft twang gives away his roots in Mississippi, where his father served as a military lawyer. From a young age, he experienced the South as a place that kept the races separate, even though they mixed in the armed forces which he observed first-hand. He recalls watching with pride and awe when his uncle, the Rev. Duncan M. Gray Jr., suffered bruises for the cause of civil rights when rioting followed the forced integration of the University of Mississippi in October 1962.

“(My uncle) was an important presence and model for what I wanted to be,” Lloyd remembers.

Only after much soul-searching, however, did Lloyd follow the calling. He so opposed the Vietnam War that he wrote to top Air Force brass in a plea for dispensation from his ROTC requirement, but he reluctantly served out his time on a stateside assignment.

Later, he earned a doctorate in literature from the University of Virginia en route to an expected professoriate, but a brush with what he calls William Shakespeare’s “vivid Christian vision” and a stint of his own in seminary convinced him to stoke the flames of faith instead. Before Boston, Lloyd served as rector of a racially mixed parish in Chicago and as chaplain of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.

Though the National Cathedral holds no official standing as the nation’s church, it has through the decades attained a quasi-official reputation by hosting the nation’s most public ceremonies and state funerals, most recently Ronald Reagan’s.

From the pulpit, Lloyd will look out on a 10-story-high nave in which members of Congress, top federal administrators and even the president can be familiar faces. Among his roles will be to utter prayers on behalf of assembled dignitaries and the 700,000 others who visit the Cathedral each year.

“He’s not the spokesperson for the Episcopal Church. He’s only dean of the Cathedral, but people will view him as a spokesperson for the national church,” said David Holmes, Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary and author of a standard history of the Episcopal Church.

“This is no ordinary post,” said Holmes. “It’s a highly visible post. And it calls for a tolerant person.”

In that capacity, Lloyd aims to put his specialty to work.

“If the church proves to be just one more instance of `my way or goodbye’, then we’re just adding to the fragmentation of the world around us,” Lloyd said. “In this time when the world is deeply divided, the nation is deeply divided, our own Episcopal Church is deeply divided, (the Cathedral should aim to manifest) a reality that holds us together and that’s deeper than what divides us.”

MO/JL END RNS