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 During
the Spanish-American War (1898), arising from a dispute over Cuba and Puerto
Rico, the United States also acquired Guam and the Philippines. In 1902, the
Episcopal Church appointed Charles Brent (at that time serving as priest in
charge of a slum parish in Boston) as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines.
He arrived on the same ship with the American Governor, William H. Taft, and
carried with him the unofficial but very real prestige of the American
establishment.
Brent could easily have confined himself to providing a kind of
ecclesiastical "home away from home" for American officials and others
stationed in the Islands. Equally, he could have devoted himself chiefly to
efforts to convert the Roman Catholics, both of Spanish and of Filipino
ancestry, whom the previous government had left behind. Instead, he directed
his efforts toward the non-Christians of his diocese: the pagan Igorots of
the mountains of Luzon, the Moslems of the southern islands, the Chinese
settlements in Manila, all areas in which he made considerable inroads and
established thriving Christian communities.
He began a campaign against the opium traffic, and served on several
international commissions devoted to stamping out international traffic in
narcotics. During World War I, he was the Senior Chaplain for the American
Armed Forces in Europe. He declined three elections to bishoprics in the
United States in order to continue his work in the Philippines, but in 1918,
he accepted the position of Bishop of Western New York. His experiences in
the Philippines had aroused in him a strong concern for the cause of visible
Christian unity. He wrote:
The unity of Christendom is not a luxury, but a necessity. The World will go
limping until Christ's prayer that all may be one is answered. We must have
unity, not at all costs, but at all risks. unified Church is the only
offering we dare present to the coming Christ, for in it alone will He find
room to dwell.
He helped to organize the first World Conference on Faith and Order, which
met in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1927. He died there in 1929, being 67 years
minus 12 days old. The following prayer, written by him, is widely used
today:
Lord Jesus Christ, who didst stretch out thine arms of love Upon the hard
wood of the Cross, that all men everywhere might come within the reach of
thy saving embrace: So clothe us with thy Spirit that we, reaching forth our
hands in love, may bring those who do not know thee to the knowledge and
love of thee; for the honor of thy Name.
The writer James Thayer Addison called him "a saint of disciplined mental
vigor, one whom soldiers were proud to salute and whom children were happy
to play with, who could dominate a parliament and minister to an invalid, a
priest and bishop who gloried in the heritage of his Church, yet who stood
among all Christian brothers as one who served."
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