Katrina-Tested Bishop Jenkins Dies at 69

The Rt. Rev. Charles Edward Jenkins III, whose life and episcopacy were transformed by one of the worst natural disasters in American history, died of pancreatic cancer on April 9 at the age of 69.

Jenkins, a conservative who advocated against dividing the Episcopal Church, was the X Bishop of Louisiana in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home and much of New Orleans. In reporting his death, the local NOLA.com website wrote:

Safely evacuated but alone in Baton Rouge, he saw televised images of thousands of suffering New Orleanians, mostly Black people, stranded for the better part of a week at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

The sight of their misery almost broke him, he said later. It compelled Jenkins, a white man in a majority-white church, to face systemic racial and economic inequities that he had seen in New Orleans but not appreciated. As national relief money poured in, Jenkins launched ministries that put the Louisiana diocese into new work such as building houses, running medical clinics and forging new relationships with African American neighborhoods and ministries.

Under his leadership, the diocese founded Jericho Road, a nonprofit homebuilder that has built or rehabilitated hundreds of homes in low-income neighborhoods in New Orleans and vicinity. Read More

Bishop Jenkins was my bishop from 1998 until 2002. It was with sadness that I learned of his untimely death. Bishop Jenkins showed a keen interest in planting new churches in the diocese as had his predecessor, Bishop James Brown. When he became Bishop of Louisiana, he launched a diocesan-wide church planting initiative. The population of the diocese was growing, particularly in East Baton Rouge and on the North Shore, 30 miles north of New Orleans, across Lake Pontchartrain. Bishop Jenkins would be thwarted in his aspirations by a largely indifferent clergy and laity and the events of 2003, the election, confirmation, and consecration of openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson. A new work was launched in East Baton but the new work on the North Shore was delayed, initially at the request of Christ Church Slidell, fearful that the new work would attract its existing members as well as newcomers to the North Shore, and later on due to a church split at St. Michael's Mandeville, my own parish, in which the parish lost a third of its member households. In 2002 Bishop Jenkins would permit the launching of a new work in the Covington-Madisonville-Mandeville area  after the Anglican Mission in America announced plans to launch a new work in that area. The AMiA new work failed to get off the ground , but the diocese's new work flourished despite a lack of support from the North Shore Deanery. A team of clergy from Baton Rouge and a locally-based Continuing Anglican bishop led worship, preached the Word, and administered the sacraments. The last time I attended one of its services, the Church of the Beloved was a shadow of its former self, having lost most of its congregation in the wake of the Gene Robinson consecration. Since that time most of its clergy involved with the new work have migrated to the Anglican Church in North America. The Robinson consecration not only put an end to the two new works, it was a major setback for other churches in the diocese. Three years later Hurricane Katrina would take its toll on the Diocese of Louisiana and its bishop. My former parish, which has at one time been the fastest growing parish in the diocese, became a mission again in 2007. The Diocese of Louisiana has truly lost one of its finest shepherds with the death of Bishop Jenkins. May he find peace of mind and healing with the Lord.