The Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston and a literary scholar specializing in the works of Flannery O’Connor and C.S. Lewis, will be the new dean of the Washington National Cathedral.
He was selected for the position by Washington Bishop John Chane, who called him “a leader and scholar, a preacher and a pastor.”
Cathedral officials announced yesterday that Mr. Lloyd, 54, will oversee a $16 million budget, a staff of almost 200 and more than 1,100 volunteers at the cathedral, the site of some of the nation’s most significant religious events.
The new dean will arrive in February as the 18th dean, replacing the Very Rev. Nathan Baxter, who retired last year.
Mr. Lloyd said a cathedral search committee contacted him.
“I knew the significance of the cathedral on the Washington landscape,” he said. “What I am most drawn to is the potential for the cathedral to be a voice of intellectually alive, generous-spirited Christianity and to be a place of reconciliation in a very divided Episcopal church and a very divided nation.”
The Rev. Bill Murdoch, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in West Newbury, Mass., who works in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts with Mr. Lloyd, called the priest “a faithful guy who is a moderate liberal.”
Mr. Murdoch, who represents the New England branch of the Anglican Communion Network, a conservative group, said that while Mr. Lloyd “has taken the opposite side of conservatives on supporting gays and lesbians,” the Trinity rector “is pleasant to talk with and willing to keep the story of faith close to what you hear in Scripture.”
He added, “I think Sam is a terrific guy, an extraordinary priest and a capable scholar.”
Since 1993, Mr. Lloyd has pastored Trinity Episcopal Church, a congregation of 3,800 families, six clergy and 50 staff. He has raised $38 million for the church’s $53 million capital funds campaign.
Before Trinity, he was the chaplain at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., from 1988 to 1993; rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Paul and the Redeemer in Chicago from 1984 to 1988; an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia from 1981 to 1984, and a personnel officer for the Air Force in Cape Charles, Va., from 1971 to 1974.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 1971 from the University of Mississippi; a master’s degree in English from Georgetown University in 1975, a doctoral degree in English literature from the University of Virginia in 1978, a master’s degree in divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1981 and a honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of the South in 1996.
He is married with two teenage children.
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