The life of the Rev. Canon William Barnwell, a crusading, liberal, Episcopalian priest who died March 27 of (suspected) coronavirus in New Orleans, could teach lessons we all should apply as we respond to the current contagion.
Barnwell was my friend, just as he was a friend to many other conservatives despite political disagreements. He had a rare ability, as described by journalist Jed Horne in a March 29 obituary: “He could read a room — and immediately begin putting together people he thought might be good at energizing each other in common cause.”
He could quickly discern which subjects were ones on which you and he would never agree and push them aside forever. He could figure out which things were negotiable disagreements and bank them in his mind for later, cordial discussion. But with just a few probing questions or suggestions, he would find common ground on other topics and immediately home in. How could that agreement be turned into concrete action — and how quickly? And crucially, how could it be organized and leveraged to be most effective? He wanted discernible results, not merely feel-good fulminations or worthless wheel spinning.
Barnwell had a manner and a voice perfectly suited for social-service organizing. He had a pronounced Southern accent but not of the twangy variety caricatured by Hollywood: It was a soft and erudite-sounding accent, welcoming, combined with a remarkably mellifluous tone.
Also, if Barnwell had the liberals’ habit of too eagerly ascribing evil to systems, organizations, and corporations, he also had the radically Christian insistence on seeing only the good in individuals — even ones who appeared irredeemable. As he said in a sermon using the famous Dostoevsky character as a touchstone: “We are not the vile puppets that the Grand Inquisitor imagines. No: We are creatures made in the very image of God. And we can live the way we were created to live, especially with the help of a loving community.”
Perhaps nowhere was his influence more felt than in his decades of work with a program called Kairos Prison Ministry International (which I mentioned in two recent columns). In his book on the subject — Barnwell published numerous books and essays — he portrayed as one of the ministry’s great heroes a former prosecutor and Republican National Committeeman, John Musser IV. This was a habit of his — he particularly loved praising the work of Republicans and conservatives who joined social ministries. Again, it was all about useful collaboration, no matter what other differences existed.
To all of his crusading for what he called “social justice,” some of which always seemed to me to be misdiagnoses of problems and solutions, Barnwell brought a highly literate sensibility. He loved faith-infused literature, especially of Southern writers such as Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor. I am particularly grateful to insights he offered in one class, or rather a multisession seminar, that he taught for parishioners of Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans on the work of the great British Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. Lewis was far more theologically traditionalist than Barnwell was, just as Percy was surely to Barnwell’s philosophical right as well. But none of that kept Barnwell from relishing their work and wanting to bring it alive for others.
As we as a society respond to the pandemic that took Barnwell’s life, let us emulate Barnwell’s approach of melding a spirit of learning with an ethic of emphasizing commonalities. As Barnwell wrote in another of his books, to really know people “means knowing their angels.” Let us find each others’ angels and, together, find the path to healing.
