The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Grasp the Nettle: An appreciation of the Bold Life of Bishop Willim E. Swing by John Weiser

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

Grasp the Nettle: An appreciation of the Bold Life of Bishop Willim E. Swing by John Weiser https://www.amazon.com/Grasp-Nettle-appreciation-Bishop-Willim-ebook/dp/B0C4QRBWZB A appreciative description of key incidents in the professional life of piscopal Bishop William E. Swing

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He's returning for a third episode for his third book called Grass the Nettle, an appreciation of the bold life of Bishop Willem E. Swing by John Weiser. We're going to get into it with John and find out all the deets and all the great stuff about this story. We kind of touched on it in some of our other interviews that we did with him as well. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? Fine, thanks. Delighted to be with you again. Delighted to have you again. It's almost like deja vu, twice. So give us a dot-com's websites, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs.

W.W. John W.weiser.com. Mm. All right. And anything, give us the 30,000 over you, what this book's about, and what's the sign? I'm a great admirer of Bishop Swing, and I was thinking about it. And I thought I should write something about him. And the impetus was my 90th birthday party a few years ago, and I had invited Bishop Swing so that my children who were coming to the birthday party could meet him. unfortunately it was high time for the what do we call that thing COVID and his wife has a serious

lung problem he said he really couldn't take the risk of coming so he wasn't there so I decided I'd write something for my children so to know a little bit about Bishop Swing so that that's what led to the book And what's inside? It's basically his life, a memoir of his life, or what do they call it, an autobiography, but an approved autobiography or something like that? And forget the name, term these. Not really. It's a series of episodes from his life. And after each one, I put a little lessons my children could learn from this episode. Ah. For example, the first episode is, so the first episode is, so the first episode. So the first episode, is the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. San Francisco was the epicenter of AIDS

because all the men who had AIDS in the country came here because there were a lot of other people had the same problem, so they felt they'd have some people who had understood their problem. At home, they were basically put into a closet and ignored. They were like the lepers in the old age. People stayed away from them for fear.

of catching it. Yeah. But that's not swing style. He rented an apartment down in the AIDS district and went there every week to meet people who had AIDS to talk to them about what it was like, what they were thinking about, what their issues were. And what he learned is they were basically all refugees from their home, from their homes, their areas, their churches,

because they were being ignored. They were not getting any help. They came to San Francisco, hoping to get help them. At the time, nobody knew what AIDS was. Other than that, it seemed that everybody who had died. So it was a pretty dramatic thing. And back then, a lot of people did die from it

because we didn't have a lot of resources or remedy. And we didn't even know what we were dealing with. I remember living through that time. It was crazy. And so Swing got into it, gave the AIDS people as much help as he could. Eventually, he even ordained some of them to the priesthood. The church resisted that for a long time. Oh, really?

As he said, I didn't break the rules, but I pushed the envelope. Sometimes it's better to ask for me. He did not ordain them. He just gave them a white cloth to put around their necks. He said, go out there and help your friend. who need help, eventually the church changes mind, allowed them to be ordained. And Swing says he's ordained more gay men and women than anybody else in the church, which I can believe. Probably a great way, you know, the most important thing you can give people when they're in a crisis situation is hope.

And, you know, regardless of what you believe, I believe, you know, I'm an atheist. but, you know, getting people to help each other, maybe ordaining them so they will go help each other and feel like they have a mission and a cause and a purpose. I mean, what a great thing to share and give. It's sad that the church wasn't supporting it initially, but there was a lot of ugliness back in those days where you're right. If you've got AIDS, you were a leper, basically, an outcast.

That's right. Yeah. And he then, after a year or so of learning about it, he had a big meeting at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which was his church. And he brought together a lot of people who knew about AIDS to talk about it. And one lady pointed out, a doctor pointed out that basically we had an epidemic and we didn't know it because so many of the people who had AIDS had no symptoms. They just look like everybody else. But she said, if you look statistically, it's what's happening. There is a real epidemic here, and we don't know.

We don't know how to deal with it. Then it turned out that Bishop Swing had had a parish in San Francisco. And George Bush, George H.W. Bush, the father, was a, what we call it, he was a member of the parish with his wife. So the doctors in San Francisco said, swing, why don't you go to Washington and talk to the president and let him know what's going on? Because we know what's going on here. But the rest of the world doesn't, and the government doesn't know anything about it. They should be energized.

George Bush was then the vice president. Bill made an arrangement to go there. And he met with him and he met with Dr. Kup, whatever his name is, the fellow. a surgeon general and a number of other people. And he was useful enough in those meetings that they invited him back almost monthly to tell people what was happening in San Francisco. That's another one of those things where he sort of stepped into the breach. So that was, and then what really fixed AIDS and that fixed it,

but brought it to attention is when a very famous actor whose name I'll remember in a moment, Rory somebody or other, no, Hudson. Rock Hudson died of AIDS? Rock Hudson announced that he was gay and that he had AIDS. And that really shook people. That really did. Most people thought he was a, you know, he was a ladies man and a lot of women had a lot

of fantasies about him because, I mean, he was a really good looking dude. I wish I could have those looks. Anyway, turned out, President Reagan knew him. him and Nancy Rape knew him. And that changed their view of AIDS. They had been very leery of getting anywhere near it or providing any help. But finally, when Rock Hudson showed up, President relented. And eventually the government started doing something to help the AIDS community.

So that was Bishop Swing in the AIDS episode. The second episode had to do with the United Nations. United Nations had been formed by a treaty signed in San Francisco at the end of the war in 1945. And in 1995, they wanted to have a 50th anniversary celebration in San Francisco. So they arranged for that. Then someone called Bishop's Wing and said, you have this beautiful cathedral. Would you mind inviting the leaders of the world's religions to come.

and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. So he said, okay. Then he went home and he thought about it. He said, I don't know any leaders of the world's religions. But he went about and he got a lot of distinguished people to come to the meeting. And they had a nice celebration at Grace Cathedral while the United Nations was having celebrations in local hotels. But later after he thought about it, he said, how is it that?

the nations of the world have a situation where they can meet and talk to each other, structured setting like the United Nations, and the religions of the world have nothing like that. We should be talking to each other. So he decided he would try to form a united religions to parallel the United Nations. Oh, wow. And he took a sabbatical from his job as bishop. and borrowed some money from a bank and took a trip around the world with his wife

to meet the leaders of the world's religions. And he met a lot of them, very distinguished people. And basically the answer that he got, as most of them said, not interested. Really? And he thought about it, he said, really, when you think about it, that people were in charge of their religions

are busy trying to promote their religion and move it forward and make it successful. And in those days, they had very little interest in talking to other people. And in fact, the Catholic religion, the world's largest religion, said, look, we don't want to sit at a table with some new group that was formed last week. They claimed it's a religion. It's just not our style. So when they said, no, they wouldn't do it. One of the people that Bishop Swing had interested originally, Mother Teresa, said she would.

help but when the church said no she pulled out of the situation wow anyway he was traveling around the world and everywhere he went he talked talked about having the religions work together avoiding religious violence etc what he found was that the people in charge were not interested but most of the lay people that heard him speak were very interested and excited So he thought about that a little bit and finally said maybe the United Religion should be built at the grassroots with ordinary people instead of at the level of the religious leadership. So he did that. And he was very fortunate to find a guy who lived in San Francisco who had been the fellow who designed the visa card, credit card, lived just south of San Francisco, was retired. and bishops went call on him and said here's my issue can you help me and the fellow said i will only help you

if you will not follow the normal pattern of organizations which is that decisions come from the top down i'll only work with you if we worked the way mother nature does which is from the bottom up so swing thought about that he said i need this guy so i better do with the way he's the way he He wants it. So he did. Then the guy said, if you want to do this, you're going to have to spend time with me, a lot of time with me so we can work this out. It swings him.

I have a day job. I'm a bishop. And the guy said, take your choice. You can either do this thing you want to do, but it takes time. You have to be present. Or you can just abandon it and be a bishop. So finally he agreed. And for three years, they met.

I think once a month for a few days to talk about different designs. And they finally came up with a design that was called, and I'll think of the word in a moment, chaotic. Chaotic. Chaotic. It was a combination of chaos and order. So he said, in the visa system, each bank has its customers and they lend money to the customers through the credit card. and they're responsible for their customers' performance. And then they send the details of each transaction back to a central office,

which handles all the paperwork. So the chaos was at the level of the banks out there where they held this dealing with their customers, and the order was the central organizing organization. So ultimately what they did with this group, what they now call the United Religions Initiative, is they created what they called cooperation circles, which are groups of seven or more people.

Among those seven have to be representatives of three different religions. And those seven or more people decide what they want to do with their time. They fund themselves, they run themselves, they manage themselves, but they have a lot of them. link to the overall organization.

They're connected with a computer network so people can communicate with each other and tell each other what they're doing and help each other. But fundamentally, each unit does its own work and supports itself. Yeah. That has now grown to be the world's largest interfaith grassroots organization. It's in hundreds of countries. and there are thousands of cooperation circles, and the future is still pretty bright.

And so is he still working today in the ministry? He's still working. He retired as bishop maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and there's a new bishop for California. But he remains as President Emeritus of the United Religions and still is on its board. but he's now 90. He's about to turn 90, and so he's telling that he's going to have to step back and let something else take over.

But he just finished writing a book on one of his other things. The other initiatives had to do with nuclear weapons. Oh, really? And he organized a group called Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons. It happened to be a good friend of Secretary of State George Schultz. In fact, when George had his second marriage, his first wife, a wonderful woman died after 50 years of marriage, died of cancer. And George was bouncing around as a kind of a lost bachelor. Eventually, somebody put him together with a very dynamic woman in San Francisco called Charlotte.

Charlotte. I know her is Charlotte Schultz, but she had a name before that. Anyway, they got together and it clicked. And eventually George asked Charlotte to marry him. She agreed. And Bishop Swing was the celebrant of their wedding. And he remained a very good friend of George's. Swing is a very good golfer.

He loves to play golf. He's excellent at it. And George Schultz was a pretty good golfer. So they'd go out and play golf regularly. And of course of their conversations, Swing learned that George, was very interested in nuclear disarmament. When he'd been Secretary of State with Ronald Reagan, they'd gone to Iceland to Rakeshavik,

and they met with Secretary General Gorbachev of the Russian Federation. Chof was interested in doing something because he was afraid of having to compete with the United States economically because he realized that his country, was much weaker than the U.S. Yeah. And Ronald Reagan at the time was talking about a special space shield, he called it, that would put a dome over the United States

that would interfere with the transfer of weapons of mass destruction coming from overseas. And Gorbachev realized he couldn't afford to do that. So he was willing to talk to Reagan about how to reduce nuclear weapons. And with George Schultz's participation, they came up with the idea of a tit-for-tat reduction. You give up a weapon, I give up a weapon. You give up a second weapon? I give up a second weapon.

And we have inspections that check that. And through that, they eliminated one whole class of nuclear weapons. And there were a series of other treaties that were signed on four. Unfortunately, they've all now been allowed to lapse. We haven't tried to keep them up, and the Russians haven't tried to keep them up. So we're back in a situation where there is no treaties to control the use of these weapons or their testing. So we're really kind of naked out there. Yeah.

What could happen next? What can happen next? Really crazy. Sounds like he really changed the world and really helped a lot of people. What an amazing man and giving things and stuff. And I guess you worked with him on the biography to help get all the deeds. I had the benefit. He'd written a couple of other books.

Okay. So I mined those books. Then I would talk to him periodically about what I was seeing and he would correct me or tell me I was going in the right direction. But basically, I can't blame him for the book. It's my book. Yeah. And, you know, you wrote two other books about some different.

different things. What was unique about writing this for you? I mean, imagine you didn't have to really come up with anything, you know, in creating characters or plots. Most of the history is already written, right? Right. For me, this was a testimonial to Bishop Swing. I'm a great admirer of his, and I thought this was a book that could be given to the people in the United Religion Initiative, so they'd know more about this guy. They see him when he visits them and talks to them and he makes a very good personal impression. But there's a lot more. They might not know about his work in the AIDS community,

might not know what he's doing with nuclear weapons. You know what he's doing with the United Religions. But he's, I mean, there was, we had that terrible episode many years ago when Rodney King was apprehended by the Los Angeles Police Department and beaten up. And when the cops were beating up Rodney Wing, they didn't know that there was a civilian standing nearby with a new video camera. And they videoed the whole thing.

And when that got shown, people were outraged. And the cops were arrested and they were tried. But what happened was in the trial, all the cops were acquitted. And when that news came out, it started. those terrible riots in Los Angeles were for, I know, 10 days, people were behaving terribly. Shops were burned, lots of destruction. So King thought, not King, Bishop Swing thought about that, he said, what can I do? So he convened a number of African Americans in his diocese.

And he met with them for a few days. And they talked about what they could do. And what he realized is that there was significant economic discrepancies between blacks and whites and significant inability on the black part of blacks to access banks, access loans. Because there was in those days what was called redlining, or the banks would redline an area. And the message was, don't lend to anybody in that area. Don't take any mortgages in that area. So the poor blacks couldn't get much money for their, to open a business or run a shop, et cetera.

So Bishop Swing met with these guys, and they talked about what they could do. They came up with what was called a development bank. And the difference is that a regular bank collects money, gets deposits, let's say, in a black neighborhood. But then it takes that money, and it lends that money. money in white neighborhoods where they feel more comfortable and they feel their money is safer. So the poor blacks are putting deposits, but they don't get the benefit of them. A development bank tries to keep the money in the community where it raised it. So they found they were one or two other developments, the banks around.

They figured out what they didn't form one. Bill Clinton got elected and he said he liked developing. banks and he's going to support them. So Bill went to Washington, nothing ever came of it. Clinton's government did not do very much for the development banks, but the California Development Bank that Bill formed with his constituents is still in business, was recently recently got an award for its performance, and it's doing well. So there was another thing with Bill stepped out into an age.

area that didn't know very much about, but it was something that needed to be done. And so he did it. So those are some of the stories. Wonderful details on that. Grasped the Nettle, an appreciation of the bold life of Bishop William E. Swing. And great stories of his life. Where did he grow up at? Do he grow up here in America? Was he from other countries? Where did he grow up in? He's from West Virginia. His father was a golf pro At a country club in West Virginia They lived in the room on the country club property Right next door to another big room

But the sense you have is that it was a very Hand-to-mouth existence And Bill was not a great student In fact, we went to college And at one time the professor said If you don't come back, it's all right. He decided he had to do something, so he gave up playing basketball and baseball and got his studies and eventually graduated. Not at the top of the class, but he graduated.

From there on, his natural skills. Then he was sent to a small parish in West Virginia, a very poor parish. It had a steel mill and not much more. One day he went to see the president of the steel mill. And he said, you know, you could do me a favor. You could come to church regularly. Because if you come to church, a lot of other people will come. So the guy came.

And one day he went to see the guy and he said, we need some money. So the fellow said, how much do you need? He said, a couple of thousand dollars. The guy wrote him a check. And then went out, he said, oh, my God, I'm an entrepreneur. I can raise money. And before he left that parish, they built a new church. Parish was pretty successful.

So he got promoted to San Francisco. He was a church in San Francisco. It did a nice job, a church more lively place. It did a good enough job that when there was an opening for Bishop, he was one of the names that was mentioned. Oh, wow. And so one lady flew on the way. She flew from a long way, and she met Bishop, swing at the church and said,

I flew all the way here because I want you to make sure you try out for this job. So he tried out for the job. He was interviewed with all the other candidates, and he was appointed Bishop of California. And off he went. But then he got distracted with these other things. But he did a good job as bishop. Anyway, he's quite a guy. I was happy to write this little book about him.

Ah, isn't that wonderful? Yes. Good job. Good job. Yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff that you have here in this book and the other books you've written and really inspiring. So as we go out, give people a final pitch on the book and tell them where they can find you on the interwebs.

This is a book about a great guy who did a lot of things and he's inspirational for some of us. because we think if he could do this, maybe if I had a little courage, I could do some of it too. Anyway, my website, www.john,wis, dot com. Books are available on Amazon, probably also at Bons and Noble.

So thank you. Yeah, interesting stuff there. Thank you for coming on the show again, John. We really appreciate it. Thank you, my pleasure. Always good to talk with you. You too. You too.

And thanks for tuning in. Order the book, wherever fine books are sold. It's called Gras the Nettle, an appreciation of the bold life of Bishop Willem E. Swing. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed all right john we're out take care