Date: August 12, 2026
During the summer, I had the privilege of serving as a keynote speaker at the twelfth triennial gathering of the Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion, hosted with extraordinary hospitality by Trinity University of Asia in Quezon City. The conference drew educators, chaplains, and leaders from across the Communion to consider artificial intelligence, ethics, and the future of Anglican higher education.
Yet one of the week’s most meaningful lessons came during Morning Prayer at St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary. Arriving late, I slipped into the Mary Chapel and found beside me a marker for the final resting place of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Palmer Frary, GTS B.D. ‘66, who spent decades teaching at St. Andrew’s.
Later that day, in the sacristy after the concluding Eucharist, the Rev. Deacon Dr. Sunshine Dulnuan, Dean of Students at St. Andrew’s, told me the story of GTS’s long relationship with the Episcopal Church in the Philippines and St. Andrew’s in particular, of which Fr. Frary played an important part. Founded in 1947 to form clergy for both the Philippine Episcopal Church and the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, St. Andrew’s has long been linked to GTS through teachers and leaders, including its first Filipino dean, Henry Kiley.
Global Anglicanism’s history is profoundly complex. At the same time, worshipping, learning, and playing together with fellow Anglican educators from around the globe, in a place so deeply connected to my own home at GTS, made the Communion feel less like an idea and more like a family. I returned grateful for all that I learned and with a keener sense of the broader family of which we are a part.
To learn more about the conference theme, see my forthcoming Religion News Service article (https://religionnews.com/author/michael-w-delashmutt/) or read the serialized version of my keynote on my Substack (https://michaeldelashmutt.substack.com/).
The Rev. Michael DeLashmutt, Ph.D.
The Dean of Chapel and Senior Vice President of The General Theological Seminary.