In Memoriam: The Rev. Dr. William G. Rusch

The Rev. Dr. William G. Rusch (December 23,1937- January 16, 2025)

Dear people of Saint Peter’s,

In the tender compassion of our God, The Rev. William Graham Rusch, D.Phil. (oxon.), D.D., D.D., entered (to employ a term we do not use so much these days) into the Church Triumphant yesterday. He took a final, peaceful last breath having heard the Song of Simeon intoned to him by The Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Drobena, a former student now a Lutheran pastor and fellow Patristics scholar, as part of the recitation of the office of Compline:

Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace:
your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of ev'ry people:
a light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.
Guide us waking, O Lord,
and guard us sleeping;
that awake we may watch with Christ
and asleep we may rest in peace.

Born December 23, 1937, to William Godfrey and Hope (Graham) Rusch of Buffalo, New York, he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Buffalo in 1959. A one-year fellowship enabled him to receive a Master of Arts degree in 1960. He then attended the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and received from the seminary what was then called a Bachelor (now Master) of Divinity degree in 1963. Securing a Samuel Trexler (pastor of the now-closed Messiah Lutheran Church, Greenpoint, and former president of the several predecessor expressions of the Metro NY Synod) Fellowship, he was admitted as a degree candidate at Mansfield College, Oxford University, England. Having successfully defended a dissertation on Gregory the Great and his influence on liturgical books written under the supervision of F.L. Cross, Oxford granted him the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1965.

Final term College Preacher, Oxford University
Albert Alspach (left) and William Rusch (right)

Having been called as Assistant Pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity (Central Park West and 65th Street, New York City) he was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament on May 8, 1966 at Kensington Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY. Those who participated in the ordination were The Rev. Dr. Paul E. Valentiner, Assistant to the President of the New York Synod; The Rev. Dr. Paul C. White, Secretary of the New York Synod; The Rev. Edward K. Perry, Dean of the Niagara Frontier District of the New York Synod; The Rev. Ralph Loew, Pastor of Holy, Trinity Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY; and The Rev. Carl E. Prater, Pastor of Kensington Lutheran Church, Dr. Rusch’s childhood church.

His ministry has taken the form of parish pastor, church executive, author, editor, and professor. After serving as Associate Pastor of Holy Trinity, he served as Associate Executive Director of the Division of Theological Studies of the Lutheran Council in the USA, Director of Fortress Press (Philadelphia), Director of Ecumenical Relations of the Lutheran Church in America, and, at its founding, Executive Director of the Office for Ecumenical Affairs of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Dr. Rusch’s teaching appointments included Tantur Ecumenical Institute (Jerusalem) and the Angelicum University (Rome). He held faculty appointments at New York Theological Seminary, the General Seminary of the Episcopal Church and the Divinity School of Yale University. He was a member of Mansfield College, Oxford University. He retired from teaching at Yale last year.

His contributions to the ecumenical movement — a commitment leading to and seeking to fufill the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s efforts at Christian unity as outlined in Ecumenism: The Vision of the ELCA — are significant.

For many years Dr. Rusch served as a member of the Lutheran-Reformed, Lutheran-Episcopal and Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues in the United States. He was instrumental in establishing the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue in the United States. His theological expertise has been critical to the ELCA’s many full communion agreements, as well as other national and international milestone ecumenical achievements, among them the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed by representatives of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council (now Dicastery) for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation—A Communion of Churches in Augsburg, Germany, on October 31, 1999.

With His Holiness, Saint Pope John Paul II, following the formation of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Vatican, c. 1990.

The Joint Declaration fundamentally changes the relationship of Lutherans and Roman Catholics not only in the common articulation of the once most-divisive theological element of the Reformation period, but in moving beyond the mutual condemnations of the 16th Century itself. That the Declaration includes the notion that these historic mutual condemnations do not apply to the present partners is in no small part thanks to the urging of the U.S. church, with Dr. Rusch as its theological guide.

He guided the processes toward Full Communion with the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the Moravian Church, and the United Methodist Church. So, too, the Full Communion agreement with the Episcopal Church, though not without an exceptional amount of personal sacrifice.

Dr. Rusch has served as a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and of the Joint Working Group between the World Council of Churches and the Vatican. For the Lutheran World Federation, he has served as a member of the Committee on Ecumenical Relationships. His leadership has been invaluable to the Standing Committee of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.

His leadership in forging relationships with the Orthodox communions is without parallel. As the newly-minted Director of Ecumenical Relations for the Lutheran Church in America, he convinced Presiding Bishop Robert J. Marshall to sponsor a trip to the Phanar. Dr. Rusch arrived with no advance appointment and knocked on the door, which was eventually opened by a young, newly-ordained Deacon of the Great Church who would become His All-Holiness Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch. Among the dozens and dozens of letters and words of greeting sent from around the world and across the ecumenical family, all bearing the mark of greetings from friends, it was the warm fraternal greeting of His All-Holiness that he heard last.

With His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. Istanbul, Turkey, 1992.

Dr. Rusch has written or edited 26 books and more than 100 articles in scholarly and church journals. Recent projects included the posthumously-published work of Henry Chadwick, a long-time mentor and friend, and writing for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. Two works remain unfinished: a book on Athanasius and a co-edited volume emerging from a symposium held at Saint Peter’s in 2019 on Differentiated Consensus, the key theological tool of the Joint Declaration.

Though many have moved on from the vision of conciliar ecumenism, Dr. Rusch remained one among a handful of its life-long champions. Nearly every person laboring in this particular vineyard of the Body of Christ today is a former colleague or student. Each has benefited from his wisdom and his friendship.

While these professional passions and achievements could have defined him, it was life as a husband, brother, uncle and, in recent years, grand uncle that mattered to him most. Indeed, in these days, his brother Harley with wife, Sharon, have been at his side, daily. Dr. Rusch’s late wife, Thora, was as beloved by colleagues and friends as he. Dinners, lunches and teas at their home are among some of my, and I know many people’s, fondest memories.

Dr. Rusch’s death, just before the 2025 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity observed internationally beginning tomorrow, inspires us all to pray that these words of Jesus might also be ours:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

— Saint John 17:20-23

Grace and peace to you,

Jared R. Stahler
Senior Pastor