I raised this question
late last year when I first noted that he'd been made episcopal visitor to the ACA's moribund Diocese of the West. At the time, I was puzzled that there's no official biography, when this is simply normal practice for a rector or bishop in any denomination. It continues to raise questions for me.
Priests leave digital trails. They should; they preside over weddings and funerals, which make the local news. They get into the news for other reasons: the parish announces when they arrive, or when they're promoted. Sometimes something newsworthy but bad happens, as we've seen with Robert Bowman and Anthony Morello. They deliver invocations at community events; they join committees. All this comes up with Google. The puzzling thing about Owen Williams is how little comes up: other than the entries on this blog, there are just the stenographically unquestioning blurbs about his consecration in April 2013 on the usual vapid Anglo-Catholic blogs. Nothing else. Nothing. Try it!
One additional snippet of biographical data now on the St Mary of the Angels new clergy page raises another question: there's a dog here that didn't bark. "Bishop Williams was raised in southern California where his father was rector of St. Nicholas Parish, Encino." Indeed: the Rev. Evan Rowland Williams was Rector of St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Encino from 1965 until his premature death at age 59 in 1987. And he proves my point: more than 25 years later, unlike his son, this priest has a digital trail. He served, for example, on a committee to "work for the preservation of unity within the Episcopal Church" during the decision-making process that led to the ordination of women. (Lot of good that did, of course.) He had an extensive obituary in the Los Angeles Times.
But, other than that he made Bishop in the ACA last year, what his dad did is all the St Mary's vestry is willing to reveal about him. And the dog that didn't bark is this: nepotism is common in Anglican denominations. From time immemorial, a good path to career advancement for priests has been to marry a bishop's daughter. More recently, another path has been simply to be a bishop's daughter. Fathers in the clergy are also in a good position to promote their sons' careers: a word to the bishop can smooth the path to postulancy for holy orders, obtain a bishop's letter of endorsement to a good seminary, put the boy in the way of a vicar or priest-in-charge position, or move a rector in a prestigious parish to hire the boy for a vacant curacy.
As far as I can see, none of this happened to Evan's boy Owen, when Evan was apparently in a very good position to make such things happen. Owen, born in 1954, was 33 the year his father died. In 1975, when he was 21, his father was 48 and robust, with plenty of contacts among his elite colleagues. But there's simply no record of any start to a clerical career for Evan's boy Owen at the usual age.
As I mentioned last year, the only other -- the only other -- public biographical detail the ACA has seen fit to provide about Evan's boy Owen is Brian Marsh's remark, "Bishop Owen Williams is known to most of the diocese from his years at Saint Mark’s in Portland, Oregon." Public records show addresses for Owen Rhys Williams in the Portland, Oregon area in the late 1990s, when St Mark's Portland was still an ACA parish, during the time of its contentious relationship with Louis Falk's abrasive, heavy-drinker protégé Robin Connors. However, Evan's boy Owen appears to have been only a lay member of that parish. Any priestly formation that would have led to his ordination in the ACA appears, from anything I can find, to have taken place after that time, when Owen would have been nearly 50 years old.
What prevented Owen Williams from considering holy orders in his twenties, when his father would have been able to help his career? A lack of a four-year degree? I can find no such reference, in any case. Under what circumstances did Owen Williams attend seminary, if in fact he ever did? (The Ven Frederick Rivers never put much stock in seminaries himself, of course.) Again, I can pull name after name of Episcopal and Anglican clergy I've known and respected over the years, and I typically find an official bio and photo at their parish web sites, including the name of their undergraduate institution, their seminary, and details of their clerical careers.
There is nothing like that for The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams. Can anyone -- including Bishop Williams himself -- fill in any of these gaps?
