Tag Archives: biography

Love at the End

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Easter 6A, 14 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 17:22-31. For we too are [God’s] offspring.
  • 1 Peter 3:13-22. Always be ready to make… an accounting for the hope that is in you.
  • John 14:15-21. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

O God of Love, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

When I graduated from college and moved to Northern Virginia, I started looking around for a church. Just as I’d always had a toothbrush for oral hygiene, I’d always had a church for spiritual hygiene. I grew up in the church; and I went to church through college (it was a church within walking distance). My big college rebellion, when it came to practicing faith, was not to quit attending, but to become an Episcopalian! Although my dad was an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, his ecumenical and mostly non-parochial work meant that’d I’d grown up as something of a religious mutt – a mix of UCC, Lutheran, and Presbyterian for worship, Roman Catholic for school, and vacations with the Episcopalians. In my early twenties I had a car, making my reach considerably wider, so I went church shopping for an Episcopal parish. Continue reading →

2017

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  • Feb. 5.  At our annual meeting we voted to update our Parish By-Laws.
  • Oct 15.  Rabbi Howard Berman preached about the 13th anniversary of our relationship with Central Reform Temple (formerly Boston Jewish Spirit).
  • Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosiland Rosenberg is published by Oxford U. Press.  Amazon’s record describes her contribution:  “Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country.”  

    Book jacket, Oxford U. Press

Its last chapter deals with Pauli’s call to ordained ministry. On p. 356, Rosenblatt notes that in 1967 Pauli began to attend Emmanuel, where then rector Alvin Kershaw advised her and referred her to The Rt. Rev. John W. Burgess, who was our diocesan bishop and the first African American episcopal bishop.  

See also Timeline entries for Pauli Murray: 1944, 1951, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.

See also Timeline entry 2007 about the restoration of our former organ:  Casavant Frères Opus 700.

 

2012

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Photo credit: UNC. Carolina Digital Library and Archives via WikiCommons.

Photo credit: UNC. Carolina Digital Library and Archives via WikiCommons.

The 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church resolved to add The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray to Holy Women, Holy Men and the Calendar of the Church Year, which now commemorates her life on the day of her death, July 1.

Murray attended Emmanuel in the early 1970s and served on our vestry (1973-75).  In her autobiography (1987) , she credits former Rector Al Kershaw with encouraging her to leave her faculty position at Brandeis University and pursue ordination in The Episcopal Church.  In 1977, at the age of sixty-six, she became The Church’s first black-woman priest.

See also

 

 

 

1987

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1963

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The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw became our ninth rector. He had previously served as  rector of Christ Church Episcopal Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky (1944 – 1947); Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Oxford, Ohio (1947 – 1956); and All Saints Episcopal Church in Peterborough, New Hampshire (1956 – 1963).

See his biography & papers.

See also our Timeline entries:  1956, 1966, 1969.

1932

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  • The Rev. Dr. Phillips Endicott Osgood became our sixth rector. For information about him and his tenure, please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.
  • Charles Scribner’s Sons published The Rev. Elwood Worcester‘s autobiography Life’s Adventure: The Story of a Varied Career (OCLC# 1896075). For a description of his calling based on it, please see Wikipedia on the Emmanuel Movement and our page.

1894

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August 15.  Architect and vestryman Arthur Rotch died of pleurisy at the age of 44.  In 1892, he had moved to 82 Commonwealth Avenue with his bride Lisette DeWolf Colt.  Son of Benjamin and Annie Rotch, founding members of   Emmanuel, Arthur had graduated from Harvard College in 1871, studied architecture at MIT in 1872-3, and then gone to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  In 1880, he joined George Tilden in designing houses at 197, 211, 215, 231 & 233 Commonwealth Avenue, among others.  In 1886, with associate Ralph Adams Cram, they built Church of the Holy Spirit, Mattapan.  In 1889, they designed a mission chapel for Emmanuel, which was never realized.

In 1886, Arthur became a member of the Corporation of MIT and served as chairman of its Department of Architecture until his death. Having with his sisters established in 1883 the Rotch Traveling Scholarship in memory of their father, he bequeathed funds for the Rotch Library at MIT.  He was chairman of Harvard’s Visiting Committee of Fine Arts, founder of the Boston Architectural Club, trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, and trustee and benefactor of the Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary.  Our Rotch Reredos was given by his sister Aimee Sargent in memory of him, their sister Edith. and their parents.

Houses at 231 & 233 Commonwealth Ave.

 

215 Commonwealth Ave.

See also

  • Wikipedia’s entry for Arthur  & for a list of their works Rotch & Tilden
  • Back Bay Houses for their works in the Back Bay
  • Bainbridge Bunting‘s Houses of Boston’s Back Bay (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1967) discusses several of their works in depth.
  • A Continental Eye: The Art and Architecture of Arthur Rotch: the Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at the Boston Athenæum, December 10th, 1985, through January 24th, 1986, and at the Klimann Gallery of the MIT Museum, February 10th through April 5th, 1986, by  Harry L. Katz and Richard Chafee.

    211 Commonwealth Ave., Boston