Asst. Bishop Steven Charleston – “Revolutionary Christian”

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

Steven Charleston is Assistant Bishop of the Episcopalian Church of California.

He is a champion of “social justice” and a leader of the Church’s “liberal” wing.

According to the website of San Francisco’s Grace Church:

Steven Charleston is widely recognized as a leading proponent for justice issues and for spiritual renewal in the church in both the United States and Canada. He has been called “one of the best preachers in the Episcopal Church,” leading worship services ranging from a revival style service in Texas to Lenten Services at Harvard University. A citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Bishop Charleston was born and raised in that state in a family that has had a long history of service in the Christian Native American community. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather were ordained ministers of the Presbyterian Church, serving among the Choctaw People in rural Oklahoma.

His vocation in the church has been extensive and varied. He was the national staff officer for Native American ministries in the Episcopal Church; the Director of the Dakota Leadership Program; professor at Luther-Northwestern Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota; the Bishop of Alaska; chaplain of Trinity College in Hartford; Assistant Bishop of Connecticut; and most recently, the President and Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.

Steven Charleston has been Chair of the House of Bishops’ Justice, Peace and Integrity for Creation Task Force.

Bishop Charleston has appeared on ABC World News Tonight, BBC World News, BBC Today Programme, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes and WRKO radio in Boston.

But here is an interesting and little known fact about Asst. Bishop Charleston.

In 1991, Father Steve Charleston, priest at the Holy Trinity/St. Anskar and professor at Luther-Northwestern Seminary in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, accepted an appointment as Episcopalian Bishop of Alaska.

Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S.’s largest Marxist based organization, publishes a journal called Democratic Left. On page 14 of the March/April 1991 issue of this journal is the statement:

“A Native American of Choctaw descent and a self avowed “revolutionary Christian,” [Steve] Charleston was instrumental in reviving the Democratic Socialists of America local in the Twin Cities.”