This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
03/06/2024 08:30 AMWhen does retired not mean retired? When retirement is not the end of one’s working years, but rather, an opportunity to work differently. This is what retirement means for Reverend Euan Cameron, the new priest at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Ivoryton. Euan took over for recently retired Reverend Brendan McCormick.
As a parish priest, Euan is traveling a relatively new path in a familiar field. Euan has long been a church historian, focusing on the Waldensian movement within the Catholic church in the 15th century. The Waldensians, like the Franciscans, espoused a life of poverty, but were considered heretics because they refused to follow the directives of local bishops.
Euan first taught ecclesiastical history in England, but in 2002, he was invited to the United States to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He discovered the Connecticut shoreline on a visit to New Haven and bought a house in Old Saybrook in 2012.
Still, despite an ever-lengthening list of publications and accomplishments, Euan says that, ever since his 30s, he felt that “something was impelling [him] to put what [he] knew to service in a different way.” Euan describes what he called a “nagging pressure” to do something more.
In 2010, Euan started a process called discernment, a detailed series of discussions beginning with his own parish priest and then working through various other church officials and committees to examine his decision to become ordained. Euan describes the process as “a long series of careful conversations.”
Euan thinks that the call to become a minister came at the right time in his life. He felt that by entering the priesthood in his 50s, he had the type of maturity that he would not have had in his 20s.
“I was less formed then,” he explains.
Given his lengthy experience teaching religious history, Euan did not have to follow the usual seminary courses leading up to his ordination, although he did do the pastoral internship that was a part of the process and did have to take the final required exam.
“It was the first time I had taken an exam since 1979,” he recalls.
Once ordained, prior to coming to All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Euan served at The Church of St. Edward the Martyr, an Anglo-Catholic parish in Harlem where services were conducted in both English and Spanish. Euan’s roster of languages also includes French, Italian, German, and Latin. He also has a reading knowledge ancient Greek and of Provençal, the romance language still used in parts of southern France. For a recent research project, Euan discovered that he could read medieval Dutch, even though he had no formal instruction in it.
Euan views his job at All Saints’ as preaching the gospel without a social or political agenda, but rather, with a message of inclusion.
“The message of Jesus was consciously across the political and social spectrum,” he explains. “It is a message of inclusion. God loves you. Jesus was talking to everybody.”
As it did at many religious institutions, COVID has affected the size of the congregation at All Saints’ Episcopal Church. Now, Euan is eager for the congregation to once again grow.
“Church participation is an opportunity for belonging, an opportunity to be there for other people and to have people be there for one’s self,” he says. “More important, it is an opportunity to hear the gospel and to hear God’s wish that we live in a better way.”
Euan did not grow up as an Episcopalian. Born in Scotland, he was a Presbyterian and first attended Anglican service as a student at Eton College. He found himself drawn to the Anglican service in the Book of Common Prayer and loved the church music. Singing, however, presented a problem.
“My voice was changing, and I can’t sing anyway,” he says.
After attending university, Euan was confirmed as an Anglican while he and his late wife were active in their local Anglican church in England.
At Union Theological Seminary, Euan was Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History. He also served as academic dean for six years.
“It’s like being chief pastor to the professors,” he explains.
Euan says the challenge of being dean was to value each professor for their individual strengths and gifts, rather than for the competition of who had been invited to the most conferences or had written the most books and articles.
Euan himself has a long list of published work on religious and European History, having most recently edited the third volume of the History of the Bible. Euan has plans for another book that he says would combine his own faith life with his historical work.
“I did one like that, and I would like to do it better,” he says.
Euan adds that he hasn’t completely given up teaching. He does an occasional online course for Union Theological Seminary.
Having now lived on this side of the Atlantic for more than two decades, Euan appreciates the differences between the United Kingdom and the United States—two countries separated, as the saying would have it, by a common language.
“In England, the Royal Mail delivers the post,” says Euan, citing an old joke about the difference. “Here, the Post Office delivers the mail.”
For more information about All Saints’ Episcopal Church, visit www.allsaintsivoryton.org.