Our first website was launched by Donald Kreider, who later served as vestry member, clerk, and treasurer.- The Rev. Dr. Deborah Little Wyman launched what became Ecclesia Ministries. She described her first efforts in a Baccalaureate address, “After two years of hanging out on park benches, subway stations, heating grates and train tunnels in Boston, during the week before Easter 1996, I had the idea that we could actually have an outdoor worshipping church. I sensed people were waiting to be gathered. That Easter I set up a folding table on Boston Common and 10 brave souls came.”
Ecclesia today sustains common cathedral, common art (which meets at Emmanuel on Wednesdays), and Boston Warm (which meets at Emmanuel on Mondays and Fridays).
See also: Timeline 1995. - Oct. 28. The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace was installed as 11th rector.
Timeline of History at Emmanuel
1995
The Rev. Dr. Deborah Little 
Wyman, who was sponsored by Emmanuel, was ordained to the priesthood by the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the Episcopal Church’s first woman bishop. She describes her “Journey to Street Priesthood” on common cathedral’s website. See also 1996.
1994
John Harbison; photo credit: Julian Bullitt
John Harbison dedicated to our benefactor Priscilla Rawson Young his memorable setting of 1 Corinthians 11:23-5 as “Communion Words“, which we sing with his other service music in Lent.
James Primosch composed “Meditation for Candlemas”, first of several motets based on the poetry of Denise Levertov, who attended Emmanuel in the 1980s. It was sung in our service on Feb. 1, 2015. Here is the text of “Candlemas” from her collection Breathing the Water (NY: New Directions, 1987). Continue reading
1993
- The Rev. Debbie Little (Wyman) joined our vestry for a 3-year term, after which she founded Ecclesia Ministries, which maintains an office and programs at Emmanuel.
- The Rt. Rev. David Elliot Johnson terminated the Rev. Michael Kuhn‘s pastoral relationship with Emmanuel.
1992
Richard Bently became Sr. Warden, and Carolyn Roosevelt became Jr. Warden. The vestry experienced conflict with their new rector in what came to be remembered as the Time of Troubles.
1991
- The Rev. Michael Kuhn was called as our tenth rector.
- Barbara DeVries continued as senior warden, and Martha Christian (Mutrie) became junior warden.
- Christopher Roos served as clerk of the vestry.
- Susy Cheston served as treasurer.
1990
Barbara DeVries became senior warden with George Graham as junior warden. She served not only for the three years of a rocky interim between rectors but also in these capacities for over forty years, a veritable Biblical span!
- Vestry member in 1968-74 & 1979-82 under Rectors Metters & Kershaw
- Junior warden from 1986-1989 under Rector Kershaw
- Treasurer from 2011-15 under our rector Pam Werntz.
- Member of our Finance Commission and Altar Guild. She guided our Green Team with her friend Jr. Warden Nancy Mueller and selected the red floribunda rose, which still blooms in our garden. Here she is pictured in 2024 with another friend, Ann Higgins, who has served for years as head of our Altar Guild under Rector Werntz.
1989
April 8. Emmanuel Music gave a concert in honor of Principal Guest Conductor John Harbison’s 50th birthday (20 Dec. 1988). His wife Rose Mary Pederson Harbison opened with a violin concerto she had played at its 1980 premiere.- Katharine Ward Lane Weems died and bequeathed a pair of Spanish candelabra now standing in the baptistery of our Sanctuary. Born 22 Feb.1899, she was the only child of Emma Gildersleeve and Gardiner Martin Lane, who was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1907 until his death in 1914. They lived at 53 Marlborough Street and were members of Emmanuel.
Katharine attended the Museum School from 1915 and began to show her work in 1920. She designed the brick friezes and bronze doors of Harvard’s Biological Laboratories with two massive bronze rhinoceri (one pictured below) installed in the courtyard in 1937.
See also
- Gardiner Martin Lane
- Her other works including the Dolphins of the Sea at the New England Aquarium and the Lotta Fountain on Boston’s Esplanade.
- Finding aid (with biography) for her papers at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe
- Her Odds Were Against Me: A Memoir as told to Edward Weeks (NY: Vantage Press, 1885)
Image by Daderot, WikiCommons, of her sculpture at the Museum School, Boston
1988
- June. Organist Michael Beattie joined Emmanuel Music for rehearsals in our Music Room of Peter Sellars‘ version of Mozart’s opera Le Nozze di Figaro, which played that summer in the PepsiCo Theater in Purchase NY. Craig Smith conducted; Frank Kelley sang the part of Basilio; Jayne West, the Countess; and Susan Larson, Cherubino.
- In her “Peace Pentecost” sermon at our Cathedral Church of St. Paul, poet Denise Levertov (1923-97) emphasized the connection between contemplation and action: “If we neglect our inner lives, we destroy the sources of fruitful outer action.
Thanks to U. of California Press for this image.
But if we do not act, our inner lives become mere monuments to egotism.” At Emmanuel she founded a Peace Group to foster the links between spiritual thought and action among her fellow parishioners.
Earlier in the decade she had been attracted to Emmanuel by our social-justice activities, beautiful music and liturgy, and rector Al Kershaw, who counseled her. “He assured her that doubt was part of spiritual growth and the darkness she encountered might increase her sense of dependence and lead her to God,” says her biographer Dana Greene citing Denise’s diary entry for June 13, 1988.
Denise’s father, Paul Philip Levertoff (1878–1954), born in Belarus, an early proponent of Messianic Judaism, took holy orders in the Anglican Church and preached wearing an alb with a tallit and kippa.
The Rev. Paul Philip Levertoff
In 1922 he had become director of what is now the London Diocesan Council for Work among the Jews and edited its quarterly journal, The Church and the Jews. He was a prolific writer on theological subjects in Hebrew, German, and English and translated into English the Midrash Sifre on Numbers (1926) and the Zohar (1933).
See also:
- Dana Greene. Denise Levertov: A Poet’s Life. Urbana IL: U. of Illinois Press, 2012.
- Denise Levertov. Making Peace. Breathing the Water. NY: New Directions, 1987.
- Donna Hollenberg. A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2013.
- Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey, eds. The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov. NY: New Directions, 2013.
- Paul Philip Levertoff. Love and the Messianic Age.
- Timeline: 1994
1987
- John Harbison won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his piece for chorus and chamber orchestra The Flight into Egypt.
- Harper Row published Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage, which was reprinted in 1989 by University of Tennessee Press as Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet.
See also: