'Hi, I'm Ted Scott': an appreciation

Canada has lost a great spiritual leader. Ted Scott's role in the struggle against apartheid helped change the course of history in South Africa.

--Nelson Mandela

The untimely and sudden death of Archbishop Edward "Ted" Scott at the end of June brought to a close one of the most extraordinarily authentic church lives in living memory. Killed in an automobile crash near Parry Sound on June 21, the former Anglican primate of Canada (1971-1986) was one of those rare people who managed to combine in one singular life, the personal and the prophetic. Scott, a son of the manse himself, (his father Tom was an Anglican priest), seems to have inherited his passion for justice from his father, described by biographer Hugh McCullum as "a thorn in the side of many fellow clergy, a man who challenged systems, both political and ecclesiastical."

Ted Scott was born in Edmonton on April 30, 1919. A Depression baby, raised in the dust bowls of Saskatchewan, Scott's personalist philosophy and social concern was indelibly stamped on his mind in those formative years. "There was strong mutual concern and support. It gave me a sense of what community and relationships were all about. Everything hinged on the reactions and concerns of people." (McCullum, p.36).

Because of his father's failing health, the Scotts, now numbering four children, moved to a friendlier climate, Ladner, B.C in the Fraser River Delta. In 1937, at the age of 18, Scott enrolled at the University of British Columbia. Unsure of future directions, he dove into university life and found a bevy of fellow travellers in the then-dynamic Student Christian Movement. It was here that Scott was able to combine his desire for social service and social action, learning to analyze the structural causes of injustice and the obvious failure of the capitalist system during the Depression.

Rejected on medical grounds from the armed services, Scott entered the ministry and theological studies. This choice he described as "less of a vocation to the priesthood than trying to live out the nature of the Christian community, rather than focusing on the obvious deficiencies of the institutional church." Ordained in 1943, Scott became priest in charge of St. Peter's, Seal Cove and at his side was his new wife Isabel Brannan, whom he had married in 1942. It was also at this time he became acutely aware of entrenched racism in Canada when thousands of Japanese-Canadians were interned and their homes and businesses were snatched from them.

From 1945 to 1965, the Scott family grew to four children as Ted threw himself into parish work in Winnipeg. Friend Elizabeth Driscoll recalled those days with what would become a familiar refrain about her driven friend--"going to bat for broke students, single mothers, disabled people, divorced women when divorce was out-he never failed the little people."

Named bishop of the Kootenays in 1966 and living in Kelowna, B.C., Ted Scott and his family revelled in their new life in the Okanagan Valley. Indefatigable as always, the future primate spent 100 days a year on the road developing shared ministries with the United Church and advancing ecumenism with other Christians.

It was in the Kootenays that Scott developed his episcopal style which endeared him to all the people and yet became the bane of the institution. People came first and institutions last. Because he was universally loved and respected for his simple, unaffected ways, the Anglican communion would come to tolerate his often chaotic administrative style in the following fifteen years (1971-1986) during which he served as the tenth primate of the Canadian Anglican Church.

Scott read the 1960s well

Ted Scott came to the job at a tumultuous time. The spirit of the 60's which both animated the church and challenged it to become transformative rather than an adjunct of the establishment, needed thoughtful interpretation.

In 1965, the Anglican church, well aware that its days as the smug "Tory party at prayer" were coming to an end, hired Macleans's writer Pierre Berton to analyze it. Berton's book, The Comfortable Pew, caused a sensation. The church had abdicated its moral leadership in society, the noted iconoclast wrote. In such critical times it had retreated behind the walls of institutionalism, sat silent in an era of brinkmanship when the peace movement needed its voice, and when racial justice was demanded, the church was found gazing inward. Further, it had failed to demand ethics in commerce and area in which many Anglicans were prominent. As well its sexual morality needed updating. It was Ted Scott's genius to ride this whirlwind and move the church into the broader struggle. In this, a golden age of church activism, he was often joined by fellow travellers on the kingdom road, people like Catholic bishop Remi De Roo and United Church moderators like Lois Wilson and Clarke Macdonald.

Always close to Canada's First Nations, Scott supported them in treaty disputes including the northern pipeline. He decried global poverty, opposed cruise missile testing and championed women's ordination, he advanced the cause of women's ordination, global poverty and opposed cruise missile testing. His leadership gifts were acknowledged as well by the Church universal. From 1975 to 1983 he was named moderator of the World Council of Churches where he threw himself into such issues as bank divestment in South Africa and the scandal of the global arms trade.

As his tenure as primate was ending, Scott took on "the greatest challenge of my life," as a member of the Eminent Persons Group, a Commonwealth initiative to help end apartheid in South Africa. "We owe him an immense debt of gratitude," South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu proclaimed as homilist at Scott's memorial service.

Hugh McCullum deftly outlines Scott's so-called retirement years, his extraordinary pastoral relationships with many on the margins--the disabled, the depressed, gays and lesbians, as well as ordinary people for whom he was a constant source of strength. It was no big deal for him as he told McCullum: "My concern for these people comes from my political position. I was always concerned for people on the margins, people impacted by the aging process."

A bishop for the margins

One named by McCullum who was absolutely devastated by Scott's sudden death was the "Bishop of Cabbagetown," Ken Caveney (CNT, Dec. 2003). For 30 years in the midst of Scott's busy life, he always had time for the often-volatile Caveney. Caveney, orphaned at 15 and jailed soon after, would pepper his language with assorted vulgarisms. Once about 15 years ago after we had shared lunch with Ted, I told Ken he had a helluva nerve carrying on in a loud voice in a cafe within spitting distance of Anglican headquarters.

The irony was that Ted Scott never blinked. With a twinkle in his, he said to Caveney. "Well, Ken, that's one way to express it." Scott wasn't one to reinvent the human. Like the Master he so faithfully emulated, he took everyone where they were on their life journey and went from there.

As I listened to Ken Caveney pour out his grief this summer, my wife reminded me of the above occasion. I said, "if there was any doubt that Ted Scott is a saint, I just received irrefutable proof."

Caveney recalled an incident that sums up Ted Scott. Ken often frequented a 'greasy spoon,' a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers, near his downtown apartment. Here in the heart of Toronto's tenderloin, Caveney was known as the "Bishop of Cabbagetown." As he walked in with Scott on one of their frequent outings, one of the women saluted him.

"Hi bishop, how ya doin?"

"Fine, sweetie, how are you?"

"Not bad. Say, who's that good-looking guy with you (meaning Ted Scott who was, as per usual, in civvies). Without missing a beat Ted walked over and said, "Hi, I'm Ted Scott."

This was quintessential Scott, the measure of the man, one whose deep compassion and solidarity pervaded all his relationships. In one slight body the personal and political were married. Solidarity was his middle name.

Ted Scott breathed authenticity. His eschewing of ecclesiastical pomp and episcopal posturing made the Anglican church more credible and the Christian church a little more real.

Scott understood at a deep level that religious leadership had little to do with archaic, irrelevant, honorific titles and a whole new set of vestments. He would have chuckled at the Vatican insistence that somehow priests are "ontologically" different. His response would have been a simple gesture grounded in human solidarity and reflecting incarnation: "Hi, I'm Ted Scott."

Radical Compassion: The Life and Times of Archbishop Ted Scott by Hugh McCullum, Toronto, ABC publishing, 2004, 520 pp.

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