The Rev. Lawrence Provenzano, outspoken activist who leads the Episcopal Diocese on LI, to retire

He declared the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island a "sanctuary" diocese that would shelter immigrants in danger of deportation. He forged ahead with a slavery reparations program despite getting hate mail and death threats that prompted the FBI to send agents to protect him. 

Now, the Bishop Lawrence Provenzano has announced he is preparing to leave his post as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island after 15 years here. When he departs in 2026, he will leave behind a legacy of progressive trailblazing that earned him both admirers and critics.

"It feels almost unreal. Didn’t we just get started?" Provenzano said in an interview. But "I think it’s time. I feel like it’s good and it’s holy and I think it will be good for the diocese."

Provenzano, who turns 70 in January, is retiring because bishops in the Episcopal Church must step down by 72. He is announcing his departure early to give the diocese time to find a successor. His plans, besides remaining an advocate, include spending more time with his family, practicing 1960s and '70s music on the drums, and even offering himself as a substitute teacher in a local public school.

Though he is preparing to leave, he is still gearing up for more activism — including possibly his own arrest — as Donald Trump gets ready to return to the White House, he said.

The diocese, which includes Nassau and Suffolk counties along with Brooklyn and Queens, ministers to 36,000 Episcopalians. Provenzano has established an outsize presence in the region even though the size of his flock pales in comparison, for instance, to the Diocese of Rockville Centre, home to 1.2 million baptized Catholics in Nassau and Suffolk alone, community activists said.

"He has been a beacon of faith-based justice for the entire island, not just the Episcopalians," said Richard Koubek, community outreach coordinator for Long Island Jobs with Justice, an advocacy group. "He’s been a role model."

"He’s the kind of faith leader that, those of us who are justice-oriented, would like to see in every denomination," Koubek added. "Very few leaders will speak out the way he does."

He has gotten himself into hot water with some congregants more than once for doing so. Koubek noted that the bishop once commented at a panel discussion that some Episcopalians on Long Island refuse to shake his hand.

Among them is Don Schaefer, a congregant who is still angry over Provenzano’s decision to temporarily shut down St. Mary’s parish in Carle Place in 2022 and rebrand it with a new, more modern approach. Schaefer and other parish leaders lost their positions.

Schaefer also disagrees with Provenzano’s activism on immigration, including offering sanctuary or shelter to people in the country without legal authorization. "I don’t think it should be done. Why didn’t he do that for the American veterans?" Schaeffer said.

He added: "The only good thing is Provenzano has to retire."

Other parishioners are sad to see him go.

"I think he’s wonderful," said Rita Ann Griffith, who attends the Church of the Transfiguration of Freeport. "He has broadened our horizons quite a bit."

She said she was impressed with how he has handled an extremely diverse diocese and took on a range of issues including climate change and same-sex marriage.

"He’s been relatable to all the congregations," she said. "He’s been a very positive force for the church."

Provenzano himself acknowledges he falls more to the liberal or progressive side of the Episcopal Church nationwide, though one former bishop, Bill Franklin, said he has also served as "an important bridge builder between liberal and conservative bishops" nationwide on contentious issues such as gay marriage. After a bitter fight, the Episcopal Church voted to start performing same-sex marriages in 2015. Provenzano was a leading proponent of it.

Provenzano "has kept the Episcopal Church united in a divisive period," said Franklin, a former Bishop of Western New York, a current assisting bishop on Long Island, and a former dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University

"He also has a great skill as a pastor, and he has kept this diocese united, which has been a major achievement since we have Black, Asian, Hispanic, and white people and clergy who make up the diocese, and he has made them one," Franklin said.

While there is no guarantee that his successor will take positions similar to Provenzano’s, it is likely because he will be chosen by the clergy and elected lay representatives of the diocese, who generally have been supportive of Provenzano, Franklin said.

Provenzano said he doesn’t regret any of his stances and is bracing for more activism, with Trump promising mass deportations and other steps against immigrants without legal documentation.

He said he would not rule out getting arrested himself if the crackdown extends to separating families or other actions he described as extreme, anti-Christian and "cruel."

"You all better be ready for the fact that some of us are going to wind up in jail if this continues, if Trump really does what he says he wants to do," Provenzano said he told his staff recently.

He added that he personally knows children in school here whose parents are undocumented immigrants, and that he’s willing to get arrested to stop such families from getting deported.

Provenzano declared the diocese a "sanctuary diocese" in 2018 during Trump’s first presidency, meaning its 129 parishes were prepared to give shelter for weeks or months to immigrants facing arrest and deportation. The diocese also helped immigrants with food, medical care, access to education and legal assistance in pursuing asylum, legal residency or citizenship.

"The immigration issue was a natural connection for us because of the geography of our diocese," Provenzano said, adding that it is possibly the most diverse Episcopal diocese in the nation.

His work on immigration issues was not inspired by political beliefs but by the Bible, which teaches the faithful in Scripture passages such as Matthew 25 to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger, he said.

"For us it is a Gospel mandate. We are just doing what Jesus told us to do," he said. It "had political ramifications that I knew would be there, but we weren’t anticipating the same kind of blowback that happened."

He got even more blowback from a diocesan reparations program launched in 2022. It started by giving out $10,000 scholarships to eight college students of African and Caribbean descent, and $10,000 each to two historically Black colleges.

The program also required every priest and deacon in the diocese to take a 10-week course giving an in-depth look at slavery and its consequences. "It basically is a direct run at white supremacy and white privilege," Provenzano said at the time.

The day he kicked off the program at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, the seat of the diocese, two FBI agents accompanied him because of threats he had received, he said.

No arrests were made, and the ceremony went off without incident. Since then, the controversy has dissipated and the diocese has even gotten more support, Provenzano said. It has received unsolicited donations from at least two companies that wanted to fund some of the scholarships, he said.

"It’s incredible that it’s caught on," he said. "There has been less rancor across the board about reparations."

Among achievements Provenzano is most proud of in the last 15 years is revitalizing the diocese’s main health care facility, St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, which provides free service to 80% of its patients because they are poor or lack insurance, he said.

"When I became bishop in 2009 our hospital system was in a very precarious position," with St. John’s suffering a "lackluster reputation," he said. "Today the health care system is vital in serving the people of the Rockaways. We are the only health care system there."

Provenzano said he has also gotten most parishes to shift their focus from how many people they get in the pews each Sunday to expanding their work into the communities where they are located — to people of all faith or non-faith backgrounds.

"The reason we have parish churches in neighborhoods and communities is to serve the whole community," he said.