The prayer warrior

Renowned eye surgeon James Rowsey, former chairman of the University of South Florida ophthalmology department, just wants everybody to find God and be happy. So why are people so angry at him?

By MIKE WILSON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published March 28, 1999

The first time Steve Gross saw Jim Rowsey pray, they were at breakfast.

When the food arrived, Rowsey reached across the table, took Gross' hand in his, and said a brief prayer of thanks.

Gross thought it strange -- this was a business meeting, after all. Rowsey, the chairman of the University of South Florida ophthalmology department, had just hired Gross as an assistant professor. They had never discussed religion, and Rowsey had not asked Gross if he wanted to pray.

Gross didn't object because Rowsey was his boss and he wanted to get along with him.

Maybe this won't become an issue, he thought.

It did. Right away.

Rowsey started faculty meetings with a prayer. When his fellow eye surgeons asked him how he was, he would declare, "I'm strong and I'm blessed today!" He prayed over sedated patients before he gave them new corneas or removed their cataracts. He bought subscriptions to Christian magazines and had them sent to the homes of his faculty. He circulated a newsletter in which a Christian author wrote, "Thanklessness is Godlessness!"

Next to that, Rowsey scribbled, "I thank you Lord for every faculty and staff member in ophthalmology!"

It wasn't long before all this became a serious problem, not just for Gross, who is Jewish, but for many of his colleagues, Jewish and otherwise.

Then Rowsey announced at a faculty meeting that he was going to lay off some of the office staff. God, he said, had told him to do it.

"I was sitting there with my mouth open, really kind of afraid," Gross says. "Because it wasn't a decision that was clearly based on merit. God had told him this was what he had to do.

"I was thinking, "What if God tells him he has to get rid of me?' "

A collision of rights

The story of Rowsey's tenure as chairman of the USF ophthalmology department sounds like the setup to a joke:

Q. What do you get when you cross an evangelical Christian with a group of freethinking professors?

A. A chairman who wants to save his faculty from going to hell -- and a faculty that feels it is already there.

The doctors say John James Rowsey is a hypocrite. A tan, silver-haired Elmer Gantry. They say this renowned cornea surgeon has, of all things, a kind of astigmatism, a warping of the vision that prevents him from seeing things anyone else's way.

Two former faculty members, Steve Gross and Robert Urban, a Jew and a Catholic, have filed federal lawsuits against Rowsey. They say he destroyed their academic careers because they didn't share his religious beliefs. They also sued USF, saying the university knew what he was doing and didn't do anything about it.

Gross and Urban were hardly the only ones who resented Rowsey. Last year, a third doctor, Mitch Drucker, who is also Jewish, settled his dispute with the university for $125,000. During Rowsey's six years as chairman, a half-dozen doctors quit the department in fury and frustration. Other staff people filed formal complaints.

USF removed Rowsey as department head in October 1997, but he remains a tenured professor.

Former faculty members also accuse Rowsey of using an experimental surgical device called the Tampa Trephine without patients' consent.

"This is a guy that operates on his own set of principles, which he believes to be God's principles," Gross says.

Rowsey's admirers -- and he has many -- are effusive about him.

"Agreeable. Positive. Affable," says a fellow surgeon.

"An excellent educator," says a former student.

"A man of great wisdom," says his pastor.

Rowsey denies he ever discriminated against anyone. "Religious intolerance would be against my religion," he says.

His supporters believe he is the one being persecuted. They say he is being sued and investigated and derided because he refuses to keep quiet about his beliefs.

"Anybody who's outspoken gets beat up," says Scott X. Stevens, an evangelical Christian who once worked under Rowsey at USF. "You don't have to be right. You just have to be outspoken."

Okay. But is Rowsey right?

"Yeah. He's right."

The story of Rowsey's chairmanship is about a collision of First Amendment rights: Rowsey's right to express his beliefs on one hand and the doctors' right to be free of religious coercion on the other.

But what happened at USF raises more than just a constitutional issue. It also begs a social question: Can an exuberant person of faith share his beliefs without driving everyone around him crazy?

Touched by an angel?

"I mow my lawn in this," he jokes

Rowsey was born 56 years ago in West Virginia and reared in Methodist and Presbyterian churches. He has a way of speaking that is deliberate and precise but not condescending.

You have come to ask him what, exactly, he believes. It can be assumed he believes Jesus died for our sins, was resurrected and sits at the right hand of God.

But what else?

Former employees report that he often said he was surrounded by angels. Was he talking about winged cherubs or just nice people? He refers to his wife, Judith, as a prophet. What has she prophesied? He has called himself a "prayer warrior." What's that?

And how does he define "Christian"? Robert Urban, a Catholic who was married in the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle in St. Petersburg, also considers himself a Christian. Does Rowsey see a difference between his kind of Christianity and Urban's?

But the first time you mention religion, one of Rowsey's attorneys interjects. Rowsey isn't going to discuss any issues related to the lawsuit, the lawyer says. He'll talk about the Tampa Trephine controversy but not his faith.

Still, it is possible to know some things about Rowsey's religious life.

According to Stevens, the friend and former USF faculty member, Rowsey became a fervent Christian in the early 1980s after attending a Bible seminar. He did not have an epiphany. He simply read the Bible and became interested in what it said.

Rowsey was at the University of Oklahoma in those days. Stevens says he was so enthusiastic about his faith that he would exclaim "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" -- utterly without warning.

Now Rowsey belongs to Without Walls International Church in Tampa, a non-denominational Christian church. Its pastor, the Rev. Randy White, tries not to use the word "charismatic" to describe the church because he thinks it has a negative connotation. But the fact is, some worshipers engage in charismatic activity, such as waving their arms and falling down.

White is acquainted with Rowsey and his wife. Rowsey's belief that Judith is a prophet is founded in the New Testament book of Ephesians, which says every Christian is an apostle, a prophet, a teacher, an evangelist or a pastor.

"A prophet, the way we see it, is someone who -- I gotta be careful because I don't want to say like a fortuneteller -- but (someone who) can kind of predict what's going to happen," White says.

Can Judith Rowsey do that?

"I know she moves very strong in that area," he says.

Without Walls' "main theme," White says, is evangelism, bringing people to Christ. Certainly Rowsey wants to do that. Did he try to convert people at USF?

Well, he circulated a memo saying he wanted to promote spiritual growth, touted the healing powers of prayer and told many people he hoped to create "the best Christian ophthalmology department in the country."

And yet, says Rowsey, "I have never discussed my religious beliefs with any of them."

Wanted: A healer

In 1990, USF organized a committee to search for a new chairman of the ophthalmology department. That July, then-USF President Frank Borkowski received a letter recommending Rowsey.

Rowsey "has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and organizational ability. . . . I would appreciate your considering him," the letter said.

Whoever got the job would occupy the James P. and Heather Gills chair in ophthalmology. Rowsey must have liked his chances. The letter of recommendation was written by . . . Dr. James P. Gills, who donated $1.2-million to endow the position. When you're trying to fill the James P. Gills endowed chair, the opinion of James P. Gills has to count for something.

Gills, founder of St. Luke's Cataract and Laser Institute in Tarpon Springs, is an ophthalmologist, land developer, triathlete, multimillionaire -- and Christian. He has written eight books with Christian themes, one of which quotes Rowsey on the subject of prayer.

In addition to recommending Rowsey to USF, Gills served on the search committee that nominated him as chairman.

"A wonderful man," he says.

Did Rowsey's Christianity help him get the job? It didn't hurt, Gills says, but "I probably would have recommended him without that."

It's easy to see why. Academic ophthalmologists rate each other on the thickness of their curricula vitae, and Rowsey's is as hefty as a paving stone. He has published dozens of book chapters, articles and abstracts. According to his friend Philip Hessburg, a Detroit ophthalmologist, Rowsey is the world's leading authority on the shape of the cornea and its effect on vision.

Gills says Rowsey "made everybody uneasy with the religious thing." But he is trying not to take sides in the dispute because he knows and likes the people involved. He hopes they all will grow spiritually.

"I pray they'll come to an understanding that there is really only one way to live -- by faith," Gills says.

Does he mean Christian faith?

Yes. Gills says even a Jewish person who lives by faith will see that the Old Testament promise of a Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus.

The Department of Evangelism

Rowsey also received the go-ahead for a huge expansion of the department. USF told him he could hire four new doctors right away and promised him almost $1-million to buy furniture and equipment

His first hire was Dr. Bradley Fouraker, who had done a fellowship under Rowsey in Oklahoma. Fouraker is a cornea specialist and a deeply religious Roman Catholic who, like Rowsey, prays before surgery. He joined USF as an assistant professor, the lowest rung on the academic ladder. Yet Rowsey put him in charge of the department's South Campus near Tampa General Hospital, making him the de facto vice chairman. Some of the doctors came to resent Fouraker almost as much as they did Rowsey.

After Fouraker, Rowsey brought in Curtis Margo, who became chief of the residency program and, later, a critic of Rowsey's leadership.

Then, in the space of a month, Rowsey hired Steve Gross and Bob Urban.

'A ticking time bomb'

Gross is 45, dark-haired, mustachioed. He got his M.D. at the University of Illinois and received training in two subspecialties: neuro-ophthalmology and pediatric ophthalmology. He says he accepted the job at USF because he liked Rowsey's enthusiasm and wanted to be a part of his plans.

"It looked like a department that was going to mushroom into a huge enterprise," Gross says.

Urban, 37, has degrees from Yale, Harvard and Columbia -- and the cockiness to go with them. He moved to Tampa partly because he believed he would be chairman someday.

"USF is not Harvard. It's not Yale. I thought I was going to be on the fast track," he says.

Gross, the son of an Auschwitz survivor, and Urban, whose mother hails from Guatemala, had little in common except this: They had decided to teach and do research instead of going for big money in private practice. Both started at USF at roughly $115,000 a year.

Then one day Urban went to work and ran into Rowsey, who gave him a hug and said, "I'm blessed!"

Urban is as huggable as any Yale man, but he didn't like Rowsey embracing him unbidden.

"I think that's invading personal space," he says.

For Urban, Gross and others, the ophthalmology department was a weird place to work.

Once, Urban told Rowsey he needed a certain piece of diagnostic equipment. Rowsey told him to pray for it. Another time, a resident asked Rowsey for permission to leave USF and complete his training in another state. According to many who were there, Rowsey said he and his wife would pray about it and get back to him.

With patients, Rowsey would get down on one knee, take the patient's hand and begin praying, according to Dan Salama, a former resident now in private practice. Once, Rowsey did this with an elderly Jewish couple who spoke only Yiddish.

"These people were completely clueless about what this man was doing," Salama says.

Six months after Gross joined the department, Rowsey gave him a present, a book called Lead On! by John Haggai.

The first chapter asks, "What kind of leadership does our world need? Bible-based, Christ-centered leadership is the only kind that will defuse the ticking time bomb of angry people on Earth." And suddenly, Gross was one of them.

Let us pray. Pass the bagels

The ophthalmology faculty met Wednesdays at 7 a.m. Somebody always brought bagels and coffee. Rowsey always offered a prayer.

A lot of the doctors didn't think it was appropriate, but they didn't say anything at first. Rowsey was a powerful guy: He set their salaries, decided how much time they got for research and parceled out office space and equipment. The doctors didn't want to get on his bad side.

Finally, four faculty members, including Urban and Gross, asked Rowsey to observe a moment of silence instead of praying, but he refused. (Rowsey has said he doesn't remember this.)

Fouraker didn't see why the prayer bothered anybody.

"If we'd had a Buddhist or a Taoist as the head of our department and they wanted to express whatever their religious beliefs were, it wouldn't have made a heck of a lot of difference to me," he says. "It was two minutes out of my day."

Then two former secretaries filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying Rowsey laid them off because they weren't his kind of Christians. The EEOC ruled against them, saying Rowsey was just trying to cut expenses. But Rowsey was concerned enough to seek an opinion from USF's lawyers about what he could and could not do, prayer-wise.

The lawyers told Rowsey he could offer prayers but couldn't compel others to pray. Nor could he punish those who didn't pray.

Things changed, sort of.

From the minutes of the ophthalmology faculty meeting of Dec. 22, 1993:

"Dr. Rowsey opened the meeting with a prayer after advising all present that they should feel free to leave the room if they did not choose to participate. He jokingly asked if anyone had a note from their wife to excuse them from the room."

Some thought the remark was not joking but sarcastic.

Then things got farcical. Gross started showing up late so he would miss the prayer. Rowsey waited until Gross got there and then prayed. Gross started arriving even later. Rowsey criticized him in his performance evaluation for being late to meetings.

For Gross and others, life in the department had gone from merely weird to deeply upsetting. But even then, Gross did not complain to Rowsey's superiors.

"I was under a tremendous amount of stress. You've got to understand, I spent 10 years training in academics, and this was my first job," he says.

He couldn't just up and leave, either. With medical schools cutting back because of plummeting insurance reimbursements, academic jobs were scarce. Besides, Gross' wife, a psychiatrist, didn't want to leave the area.

Urban was in a similar situation. His parents had just moved to Florida to be near him. The timing was all wrong for him to leave.

The inner circle

The department separated into factions. Rowsey's religious "inner circle," Urban says, included Fouraker, cornea fellow Scott Stevens and several support people.

Among the Christian support staff were David and Sylvia Crane, whom Rowsey had known in Oklahoma. Sylvia was Rowsey's secretary, and David was -- well, he was hired as a computer specialist, but Urban and others say he spent most of his time as Rowsey's valet, driving him to the airport and picking up his cleaning. The Cranes declined to be interviewed for this story.

Stevens' promotion from cornea fellow to assistant professor was equally controversial. Stevens is probably the closest thing Rowsey has to a disciple. He had met Rowsey in the 1980s, when he was at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. Later, Stevens says, he had "a pretty strong premonition" that he should call Rowsey and ask him for a job.

Rowsey offered him work as a research assistant but said he couldn't pay him. Stevens took the job anyway. For several months he toiled 80 hours a week for free.

Stevens did his residency in Detroit, then had another premonition, this time that Rowsey would give him a fellowship at USF. It came to pass. At his first meeting with the faculty, Stevens declared matter-of-factly that he had come to work for Rowsey because God told him to.

"Everybody's face just kind of played basketball on the table top," recalls John Brinser, then a USF microbiologist. "Rowsey was beaming like he just won the Nobel Prize."

During the fellowship year, Stevens was Rowsey's constant companion. He wrote research papers with him, assisted him in surgery and prayed with him. Some people say he even began to look like Rowsey: He had a similar haircut, wore the same kind of lab coat and, like Rowsey, kept a pocket light in his upper left-hand pocket.

When Stevens' fellowship ended, Rowsey found a way to keep him on at USF. He placed an ad for "a fellowship-trained Corneal-Refractive surgeon" with experience in infectious disease research and corneal transplantation -- in short, Scott X. Stevens.

Soon Stevens was named assistant professor of ophthalmology, a tenure-earning position.

Stevens, now in private practice in Oregon, says there's nothing wrong with someone hiring qualified people he knows and likes. He points out that he had secured private grant funding for half his salary, which would have made him a strong candidate even if he had never met Rowsey.

Still, some faculty members regarded Stevens' hiring as more evidence that you had to be a "prayer warrior" to get ahead.

An even better piece of evidence, in their view, was what they saw as Rowsey's preferential treatment of Fouraker, the de facto vice chairman.

According to the South Campus doctors, Fouraker got everything he wanted -- a big office, nice furniture, diagnostic equipment, the help of a cornea fellow -- and they got next to nothing. When Gross started work at USF, he didn't have running water in his examining rooms. He assured patients of his cleanliness by washing his hands elsewhere and drying off with a paper towel as he greeted them.

David Ormerod, a retina specialist, says he went a year without such basic equipment as an ultrasound, a laser and a computer. He says he repeatedly asked for Fouraker's help, to no avail. He also papered Rowsey's office with letters complaining of "little support" and "no accountability."

"The people who pray get what they want and the people who don't, don't," Gross says.

Fouraker acknowledges it took some time to get the necessary equipment on the South Campus. "The medical school only has X number of resources," he says.

The allocation of those resources had nothing to do with prayer, he says, and everything to do with productivity. Gross and Ormerod weren't generating enough revenue to justify the purchase of every expensive tool they wanted, he says. (Gross and Ormerod, of course, say they couldn't build their practices because they didn't have the necessary equipment. Around and around it goes.)

By the middle of 1997, most of Rowsey's detractors had quit the department. That October, Urban, Gross and Drucker notified USF of their intent to sue. The university hired a Tampa law firm to look into their allegations.

In February 1998, the firm released a report saying Rowsey may have been guilty of religious discrimination. It recommended imposing "reasonable restrictions" on Rowsey to make sure he didn't break the law.

But by then, he had already been ousted as chairman.

On the outs

USF has an awkward relationship with Rowsey these days. With one hand, it is trying to defend him in the religious discrimination case. With the other, it is trying to slap him for his behavior in the Tampa Trephine controversy.

The university will have to get in line. Two federal regulatory agencies and the American Academy of Ophthalmology are also looking into Rowsey's use of the trephine, a cutting device that extracts corneal tissue for transplantation. They are investigating whether it was proper for Rowsey to use the device in surgery without federal and university oversight and without obtaining consent from his patients.

To Rowsey's critics, his use of the trephine is another example of his disregard for earthly rules.

Rowsey acknowledges using the trephine more than 50 times but says he didn't need supervision or special consent because the tool never touches a live human. It is used only to take tissue from donor eyes.

He blames his troubles on a vendetta by Urban, who, he correctly points out, has complained loudly about his use of the trephine. Urban says he spoke out because he cares about patient safety.

This much is clear: USF has grown weary of its $375,000-a-year ophthalmologist. The dean of the medical school has twice asked for his resignation, but Rowsey won't give it to him. Rowsey says he still sees "considerable growth potential" in the ophthalmology department.

Rowsey says he prays about every important decision. USF has asked him to quit, but so far, the Lord has not.

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