Let's Take A Closer Look At Fr Barker's Anglican Mentor, Bp Crowther

From the start, based on the sketchy and incomplete Wikipedia entry, I found something strange about Bp C Edward Crowther, the Church of England priest who, at the start of his career, had a "preaching tour" of the US that led to his becoming UCLA's chaplain -- but that was just a way station in his seemingly foreordained progress toward greater things.

It's hard to avoid thinking there were people who had greater things in mind for him from the start, with a remarkably choreographed series of career moves for a 15-year period between his ordination in 1956 and his installation as an assistant bishop in 1971. But by early middle age, Crowther seems to have gone off the rails. All that in turn makes me wonder how Fr Barker fits into the story.

My regular correspondent has this to say about the parish where Crowther began his Anglican career, St. Philip and St. James' Church, Oxford:

This rang a late bell, as this is the church C. S. Lewis attended, usually referred to by him as “Pip and Jim.” Although there were and are a number of Anglo-Catholic destinations in Oxford, Lewis was a firm advocate of attending one’s local parish church rather than shopping for a more congenial one elsewhere. The implication was that “Pip and Jim” would not otherwise have been a draw, and I see that it eventually became redundant. A curacy there even in the late fifties was probably a sinecure.

It appears that soon after he left his position as UCLA chaplain, he was well-connected enough in the media to get a mention in TIME. A January 14, 1966 story entitled "Anglicans: Angry Young Bishop" says,

Episcopal Father C. Edward Crowther, who got his rookie training in civil rights by picketing against racial discrimination in fraternities at U.C.L.A. , is now battling in the big league: South Africa. Two years ago in Los Angeles, Crowther, an English-born U.S. citizen, was just a campus chaplain, but a fast rise in the Anglican hierarchy has made him Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman and, at 36, the church's youngest bishop. His office in Kimberley has a picture of Martin Luther King on the wall. . .

A TEC press release gives the most detail we currently have on what putatively led to Crowther's expulsion from South Africa:

Bishop Crowther went to South Africa as Dean of St. Cyprian's Cathedral in Kimberley and was elected Bishop in 1965. He was visited many times by the special branch of the South African Police, incurring their wrath by his steadfast opposition to apartheid. When he was banned from the African reserves in his diocese, he defied the order and personally delivered truckloads of food to starving Africans who had been dispossessed of their homes.

While in South Africa, Crowther was clearly connected with international bien pensant elites. A meeting, which can only have been orchestrated, took place with then-Sen Robert Kennedy on Kennedy's South African visit on June 5, 1966.

Kennedy, who was invited to South Africa by the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), was en route to Cape Town to deliver an important speech. Instead of using a special airport room provided by officials, Kennedy and Crowther walked back and forth on the airstrip to converse for 20 minutes while reporters and members of the Special Branch stood at a distance. Kennedy used the trip to express support for the struggle against apartheid.

This account of Crowther's election and tenure in South Africa is also suggestive:

Bishop Crowther, who was born and raised in England, received worldwide notice when he was arrested by South African police in June, 1967, and told that he would have to leave the country in two weeks. He had upset the South African government since he went to the Country in 1964. He had been elected to the post of Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman by the Anglican Cathedral Council. At the time of his election he was the Episcopal Chaplain at UCLA and had been active in civil rights in the United States.

In other words, apparently soon after naturalization as a US citizen, and apparently without setting foot in South Africa, he was suddenly elected Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman. This is a thumbnail written probably by Crowther himself for a speaking engagement, and it may not be reliable. But if it's true, and parts of it certainly are, how'd that happen?

But by May, 1967, prior to his expulsion Crowther was already associated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, headlining a conference in Geneva. A possible extrapolation might be that he'd been inserted into South Africa as some type of provocateur, and plans for his extraction already existed before his final confrontation with police. As a globetrottting do-gooder, he made no sacrifice.

On February 2, 1968, he addressed the United Nations General Assembly with Dudley Do-Right good looks:

It's hard to avoid thinking that Crowther, like our contemporary Greta Thunberg, had well-connected handlers with an agenda of their own.

When a reorganization at the Center for Democratic Institutions apparently ended his fellowship there, Crowther was appointed by John Hines, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, as Executive Director of something called Operation Connection in Washington, an ecumenical non-profit that was going to heal the cities. An indication of where this job stood on the food chain was that Crowther replaced Paul Moore, Jr, who was moving up the ladder himself to become the socially impeccable Bishop of New York.

Crowther appeared, along with Malcolm Boyd, at the usual protest venues during this period, including the 1970 Mass for Peace at the Pentagon though Boyd was the headliner. But something must have changed that year, when Crowther was 41. He was installed as an Assistant Bishop of California, Pike's former diocese, in late 1971.

My regular correspondent thinks an assistant bishop in The Episcopal Church is something of an honorific position, typically given to retired diocesan bishops, who assist at less important episcopal functions. As a result, there's some question how active Crowther was in this role. In any case, he was out of Washington and out of the public eye.

By age 42, when his contemporary Bernard Law had only just begun to rise high in the Catholic Church, Crowther had been shunted into a position normally held only by retired diocesan bishops. We simply don't know what happened in his case, but it does come in the context of other public disintegrations during that period, from James Pike to Benjamin Spock to Bertrand Russell to Timothy Leary, not to mention half a dozen prominent musicians.

By 1975, still identifying himself as an Episcopalian assistant bishop, he was spouting New Age psychobabble to Quakers and Unitarians:

My wholeness as a human being consists of the consummation, the putting together of those three great loves within my own skin, which, analytically speaking, is my life. And so I increasingly accept life as being an ongoing interior journey into the potential wholeness which you and I possess.

California records show two divorces from his first wife, Margaret, in 1977 and 1980. He remarried to Ingrid Schunemann in 1982. He ran for a seat on the Santa Barbara City Council in 1982 but apparently lost. He seems to have lived mainly in Santa Barbara ever since his time at the Center for Democratic Institutions. By 1991, Crowther was apparently working as a therapist, though retaining a title as assistant bishop, now in the Diocese of Los Angeles:

Also asking for leniency was Gabrie’s therapist, C. Edward Crowther of Montecito, who also identified himself as an assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

“This is not your run-of-the-mill criminal person,” Crowther said. “I was very, very impressed by her remorse.

He has had several residences in Santa Barbara, a very swanky place, so apparently he's never been destitute, but there is no information on where the money came from.

There are many unanswered questions in Crowther's biography. Why did he change careers at Oxford to go into the Church of England, when he seemed to be successful as a law professor there? Why did he stay in a holding pattern as a curate for three years, when he suddenly went to the US and fairly quickly became chaplain at UCLA? Why did he become a naturalized US citizen, in the minimum time necessary? Where did the connections come from that allowed him to get the level of press attention he had throughout his time as a bishop?

What was up with that choreographed visit and photo op with Bobby Kennedy, held outside to avoid a potentially bugged conference room? How did he reach the ultra-elite inner circle of the Center for Democratic Institutions and then succeed Paul Moore, Jr as head of an elite Washington non-profit? And what led to his rapid flameout at age 41? My inclination is to see the letters CIA behind this case, but to go much beyond that would be even more speculative.

Where does Jack Barker, his protégé (by Barker's account) from UCLA days, fit in? I have a sense that Crowther was never actually in much of a position to take on a protégé but may not have understood this earlier in his career. The story we have suggests that whoever called the shots was going to send Crowther to South Africa, perhaps to fix the place like a Desmond Tutu 1.0, and he knew this while he was still at UCLA.

But his assignment sounds like it was never going to be more than to fly in, stage some scripted provocations, and get thrown out as a martyr. It was unrealistic to suggest to Barker that he'd have any kind of future as a priest in South Africa under those conditions, when Crowther would hardly be there long enough to ordain anybody, much less look after his career.

I would guess that if Crowther was able to influence Barker's hiring at St Mary of the Angels in 1970, it would have been at the tail end of his effectiveness, and his ability to sponsor Barker any further beyond that would have been minimal. This may have had an effect on Barker's apparent change from a liberal at the Pike-Crowther end of the spectrum to protégé of a new mentor, Mr Catholic.

It's also been suggested to me that Bernard Law, who comes in later in Barker's story, may also have had CIA connections via his father, his activity with the Church in Latin America, and his friendship with the Bush family. Law also rose in his career via civil rights at the same time Crowther was doing the same thing. I can't rule out connections in that direction, with the caveat that the CIA, a creature of the elites and the deep state, has not been a model of competence or effectiveness then or now.

I sometimes hear from visitors who have corrections, insights, or new information to add about personalities covered here. I would welcome any such in the case of Bp Crowther, who is still alive. As has been my consistent policy, I will keep any such contacts confidential.