Tag Archives: clergy

2026

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31 Jan.  We celebrated the life and ministry of our Senior Pastoral Assistant (his choice of title), The Rt. Rev. J. Clark Grew II, 10th Bishop of Ohio (1939-2025).  Our rector, family members, The Rev. Jennifer Daly, and The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr. spoke and were joined in the chancel by bishops Arthur B. Williams, Jr.; Julia Whitworth; Thomas J. Brown, and Alan M. Gates.  Dr. John Dilworth and violinist Daniella Maddon provided the musical offering.  See also the order of service and the livestream recording.

Clark Grew in his dinghy Goodness & Mercy

Performing & Preaching

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Hello, Folks! This was my last week at common art and Boston Warm until the New Year; and what a wonderful final week it was! On Wednesday we had the world premiere of Richie’s play with our very own Reverend Pam portraying the Voice of God! It was a great performance; it all came together very well. The whole cast really committed to their parts and brought the play to life with passion and joy. We also had a full house for the performance, and there was lots of good energy and excitement in the room. Continue reading →

2025

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March 30.  We continued our annual meeting, which had begun in February via Zoom due to a snowstorm, with a celebration of the 15th anniversary of our rector’s installation. Actually Pam came to us as priest-in-charge 17 years ago and preached her first sermon on March 2, 2008.

Wardens Pat Krol & Rebekah Shore were joined by Jill Silverstein of Central Reform Temple in congratulating our rector Pam Werntz.

May 4.  Our rector presided at a memorial service in Lindsey Chapel for benefactor James Theodore Bartlett (2/13/1937 – 11/7/2024).  A beloved member of our congregation, Jim served for years as chair of our Finance Commission.

May 11.We dedicated our third pulpit statue to the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Radley Hiatt: theologian, prophet, priest, professor, and advocate.

Ordained as one of the Philadelphia 11 on July 29, 1974, this “bishop to the women” served as an inspirational mentor to many, including our rector, whose dedicatory sermon can be watched about 28 minutes into our recorded service.   For Dr. Hiatt’s connection to Pauli Murray, please see We’ve Come This Far by Faith.  We thank Ted Southwick and the friends of the late Dr. Hiatt for supporting this project.

Sculptor Ted Southwick smiled while our rector asperged his figure of the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Hiatt. Photo: JG Bullitt

Marianne Iaucco, vestry member (2007-08), Clerk of Vestry (2009-10); Mary Blocher, Treasurer (1995), vestry member (2007-11); Anna Pauline Zeusler, vestry member (1990-93)

Dec 21.  We bade farewell to Mary Blocher and Marianne Iauco as they joined our diaspora in order to be closer to family after their four decades of service on our vestry and Worship Commission. Pauli Zeusler, who had known them when she served on our troubled vestry in the early 1990s, came to the luncheon they gave the parish before their departure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dec. 22.   The Rt. Rev. J. Clark Grew II, Bishop of Ohio (1994-2004) and our Associate Priest for many years, died in Boston. Born 20 Dec. 1939, he was the namesake of his great uncle J.C. Grew, US Envoy to Denmark & Switzerland, Ambassador to Turkey & Japan, then Undersecretary of State during WWII. The Grew family held Pew 62 from the foundation of Emmanuel, and Annie Clark (Mrs. Henry) Grew held the deed for Pew 51 from 1897-1925. 

2002

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May 30. The Rev. Suzanne Radley  Hiatt, whose memorial statue stands on our pulpit, died.  See our discussion of her appreciation for Pauli Murray.

Under Rector Wm. Blaine-Wallace, Betsy Bunn served as Sr. Warden, Allen Thompson as Jr. Warden, and Bill White as Clerk of the Vestry.  They hired Elaine Construction to begin restoration of the nave, sacristry, and other parts of our building damaged by fire.

Betsy Bunn, Sr. Warden 2001-2003

Pauli Murray’s Legacy

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Following Emmanuel’s July 2023 dedication of the Pauli Murray statue that graces our pulpit, we have some related news from her niece, Rosita Stevens-Holsey, and officially, from the U.S. Mint. The Reverend Dr, Pauli Murray Quarter was released on January 2, 2024 as one of the new set of American Women Quarters. The design and significance of the coin are described here.

Another of our pulpit statues is dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Hiatt, who was greatly influenced by Murray.

We have also learned that a Pauli Murray scholarship is continuing apace. A recent collection has been published, To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation. Edited by Anthony B. Pinn, this work builds on Pinn’s previous research and includes sermons, lectures, and speeches.

Lastly, of interest to us is the growing list of recipients of the annual Pauli Murray Book Prize for the best book in Black intellectual history. Sponsored by the African American Intellectual History Society, and first awarded in 2018, the list of recipients includes authors writing on Black history, Black internationalism and environmental Justice, and Black politics and activism. The winners also write a series of posts on the Society’s blog, Black Perspectives which is a global forum for news and public scholarship.

–Mary Beth Clack, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church Jan. 3, 2024

2022

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  • Rector blessing doors with Holy Water20 May.  The Rev. Pamela Werntz blessed the Babcock Doors to the Sargent Lobby at the rear of our sanctuary, where head usher Stephen Babcock welcomed congregants to our services for fseveral decades.  Assisting her are subdeacon Karen King and the Rev. Robert Greiner, with Stephen facing his doors. Although our rector had lifted our mask mandate for the Covid pandemic earlier, vulnerable congregants and many of our musicians continued to wear them.  See also: Timeline 1997.
  • May.  Vaughan Sherrill joined us as Parish Administrator.  She is a great-granddaughter of Henry Knox Sherrill, who was ninth bishop of our diocese, twentieth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, a founder of the Episcopal Church Foundation, and President of the World Council of Churches.
  • Sept.  Our rector became dean of our diocese’s Boston Harbor Deanery.
  • 11 Dec.   The Chorus of Emmanuel Music sang parishioner Sid Richardson‘s Magnificat, which they had commissioned for Gaudete Sunday. Listen to it on our YouTube Channel.
  • Our puppeteer Sara Peattie published on Amazon’s Kindle platform 68 Ways to Make Really Big Puppets.

The Harvest of Righteousness

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Advent 2C.  19 December 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Baruch 5:1-9 Take off the garment of sorrow and affliction and put on the robe of righteousness.
Phillipians 1:31-11. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God
Luke 3:1-6 All flesh shall see the salvation of God.

God all merciful and all compassionate, grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

As I said last week, Advent is a season for communal and institutional reflection and repentance, for collective atonement and reparations. Our readings for this second Sunday in Advent are so full and big with calls for repentance and reparations; it is almost as if they are pregnant with possibility. The prophet Baruch and the evangelist Luke are both reminding their hearers about the words of the prophet Isaiah. And Luke draws a picture of John the Baptist that is just like the prophet Jeremiah, consecrated before he was born, and just like Elijah by the Jordan in the wilderness. Luke also has already explained that John’s work was so closely related to Jesus’s work, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they must have known one another before they were even born. Continue reading →

2021

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  • 1 Jan. Orbis Books published When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community by our 11th rector, The Rev. Dr. William Blaine-Wallace.
  • 21 Jan.  Boston Sun article by Seth Daniel, “Made for This Time: Surprisingly Emmanuel Church Was Engineered for COVID-19”, discussed the efforts of Michael Scanlon and Julian Bullitt to monitor air quality throughout our building, which was designed in the time of tuberculosis.
  • March.  The Rev. Tamra Tucker and our rector formed two mixed groups of parishioners from common cathedral and Emmanuel to follow The Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground dialogue series on race and faith.
  • July 6.  Beloved parishioner Ann Taylor Roosevelt died.  She endowed our Taylor Fund for Theological Education in memory of her father, The Rev. Charles Lincoln Taylor, who served as Dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge MA from 1944-1956.
  • July 29.  Kevin Neel retired as organist and parish administrator par excellence.
  • 26 Sept.We celebrated the retirement of Pat Krol, who had served as Executive Director of Emmanuel Music and greeter since 2006.  We funded the cantata and dedicated in her honor these doors, which she held open every Sunday while our choristers and liturgists to processed into the Sanctuary.
  • 31 Oct.Memorial service for The Rev. Dr. David J. Siegenthaler (1926-2020), former priest in charge, was held in our well-ventilated sanctuary.  After leaving Emmanuel, Dr. Siegenthaler had served as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Duxbury MA, and then as archivist at the Episcopal Divinity School, where he taught for four decades.
  • Jill Zunshine funded restoration of two windows in our chancel’s clerestory, which had been broken by firefighters in 2000.

2020

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  • March 7. 10th anniversary of our 12th rector’s installation.  On its eve, we feasted with dinner, speeches, poetry, and song.  Thanks to the efforts of our deacon The Rev. Robert Greiner, Mayor of Boston Martin J. Walsh proclaimed it Reverend Pamela L. Werntz Day.  Pictured in the banner of this post are Pam Werntz, Amanda Grant-Rose, Rebekah Rodrigues, Joy Howard, Grace McElroy-Howard, Laura Simons, Bob Greiner, Rabbi Devon Lerner, Gennifer Sussman, The Rev. Tamra Tucker, and Jaylyn Olivo.
  • Bill Wallace seen on a Sussex Directories Inc site

    The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace

    June 28.  Our 11th rector, the Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, read for Chapel Camp from his book When Tears Sing:  The Art of Lament in Christian Community (Maryknoll NY:  Orbis, 2020).

  • July. Before he left to study at Virginia Theological Seminary, our Candidate for Holy Orders Joshua Padraig (Paddy) Cavanaugh compiled a liturgical customary, an illustrated manual which is used by our Altar Guild in its preparations for services throughout the year.
  • Oct. 21.  Parish Operations Manager Kevin Neel set up our YouTube Channel and with video equipment bought by Emmanuel Music, Brad Dumont and Matt Griffing began to livestream our services.
  • Nov. 1. A Saint for All Saints, a conference about the legacy of our own saint, Pauli Murray, organized by a committee led by Jr. Warden William Margraf, was held via Zoom.  The Rev. Dr. Yolanda A. Rolle, Episcopal Chaplain of Howard University, whom we sponsored for the priesthood,

    The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray

    moderated a panel comprised of Assoc. Dean Melissa W. Bartholomew of Harvard Divinity School; the Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, rector of St. Aidan’s Church, San Francisco; and the Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Canon Theologian of the National Cathedral and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary.  Please see our page for the program and more.

 

2018

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Emmanuel House, home to a small intentional community, was created by the Charles River Episcopal Co-Housing Endeavor (CRECHE) with funding from our diocese’s Together Now campaign.  As Executive Director of CRECHE, The Rev. Isaac Everett (above right) serves at the altar and in our pulpit from time to time. They rent from our diocese the former rectory of St. Luke and St. Margaret at Packard’s Corner, Allston.  Learn more about the intentions of Emmanuelites who live there on their website.

Sharon Ballard, Clerk of Vestry 2017-18. Photo: Jullian Bullitt

Sharon Ballard, retired from grant writing and serving as Clerk of the Vestry for two years.

September.  The Rev. Susan Ackley joined us while our rector the Rev. Pamela Werntz took sabbatical leave.  In addition to preaching and provided pastoral care, she was instrumental in creating a weekly Recovery Eucharist held in Lindsey Chapel.

hamsa palm

Digits of the hamsa signify generosity, strength, replenishment, blessing & well-being.

The theme Pam chose for her sabbatical was exploration of the hamsa, a palm-shaped symbol used by Muslims, Jews, and Christians, also known as the Hand of Fatima and the Hand of Miriam. She visited Istanbul, Vienna, and Andalusia in search of its depictions.  We also used it for our stewardship campaign.