Rev. David Angus Brower

The Rev. David Angus Brower, 82, of Howell, Michigan, died peacefully March 6, 2025, during the night following Ash Wednesday. David was born September 25, 1942. He graduated from Zeeland High School in 1961, then graduated college and earn three master’s degrees in education, anthropology, and divinity. He was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1979.

More than four decades of parochial ministry began in the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan and culminated in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan, including serving as assistant rector at All Saints’, Pontiac, and rector at Grace Church, Southgate, in the Diocese of Michigan. He then served as rector of the tri-county Western Ohio Episcopal Cluster in the Diocese of Southern Ohio and at Grace Church, Lockport, in the Diocese of Western New York. In 2005, David and his wife Clara returned to the Diocese of Western Michigan through which they both remained active in ministry until 2023. They lived in David’s birthplace Zeeland, Michigan, for 18 years.

David is survived by his wife of 60 years Clara (Grant) Brower, 85, their daughter Cassandra, 58, (Edmond), and three grandchildren: Thor, 30, Rowan, 28, and Sirona, 25. David is also survived by two sisters Mary Elgersma of Plainwell, Michigan, and Ruth Rutherford of Niles, Michigan, and sister-in-law Sheron Brower of Watervliet, Michigan. He was preceded in death by his parents Angus and Emma (Anderson) Brower and two brothers, John and Paul.

While David Brower led a life of faith nurtured by the precepts, rituals, and rubrics of the Christian Church, his soul moreover was nourished at its deepest level by the natural world. Perhaps first fed by the spiritual ethos and rhythms of central Africa upon which David and Clara were raised and where their parents were missionaries in the Congo. Or later, when mentors turned to words to explain the inexplicable—the centrality of the natural world to a spiritual life.

“We are here to witness the creation and abet it,” wrote Annie Dillard, one of the mystic and transcendentalist voices embedded in David Brower’s beliefs. “We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us.”

David Brower was at home in the soil of the earth and all its bounty.
Ashes to Ashes. Dirt to Dirt.

The memorial service for the Rev. David Angus Brower will be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 504 Prospect Street, Howell MI 48843, on Saturday, April 26, 2025, beginning at 11:00 AM EST.