2014 Hal Brook Perry Award
Steven Lynn Thomason
Episcopal priest, family physician, hospice doctor, husband and father. You have given quiet, skillful and diligent service on behalf of the church’s mission and on behalf of your patients.
You earned your bachelor’s degree from the University of the South and your doctor of medicine degree from the University of Arkansas. Your 20-year medical practice began in Arkansas in 1992 and continued throughout your studies at Seminary of the Southwest where you earned the Master of Divinity degree in 2004. You are board certified in family medicine and in hospice and palliative medicine.
You have served as rector of St. Thomas in Springdale, Arkansas, and as canon missioner for the Diocese of Arkansas. You served as interim CEO of the Circle of Life Hospice while you were priest associate at St. Paul’s in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 2012, St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, Washington called you to be their seventh dean.
Your friend and classmate Torey Lightcap noted that you “often challenged professors and other students with the urgent question of relevance: ‘What does this have to do with baptismal ministry?’” In your sermon titled “Continuing the Covenant” preached at St. Mark’s Cathedral last year, you recounted your earlier “predisposition to make every conversation about the Baptismal Covenant.” You see covenant as a gift in which two parties become one “and the synergy of that connection can change the world.”
Your conviction that changing the world is possible because of God’s continued covenant with us is evident in your ministry as doctor and as priest. You are one who focuses your time on your priorities and gives yourself wholly to them, including seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself and striving for justice and peace among all people.
Following the Cathedral vestry’s decision to allow Tent City for the homeless back on cathedral grounds, you challenged the Cathedral congregation with a question of covenant: “What else might we be called to consider in the pursuit of God’s justice—not because it is right, but because love would have us do no other?” Your seminary and Alumni Association are honored to present you with the 2014 Hal Brook Perry Distinguished Alumni Award.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge R. Reid Morgan III
Dean and President Alumni Association President
