Tag Archives: clergy

2015

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April 4.  The New York Times reported that Pauli Murray‘s family home in Raleigh NC had been named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As part of the Pauli Murray Project a memorial mural painted on the brick wall of a former tobacco warehouse in Durham NC shows her flanked by panels that read:

 As an Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray used the pulpit to find the “spirit of love and reconciliation” as expressed in her ministry as the “goal of human wholeness”. — Karla Holloway

It may be that when historians look back on 20th century America, all roads will lead to Pauli Murray.  Civil rights, feminism, religion, literature, law, sexuality — no matter what the subject, there is Pauli. — Historian Susan Ware

Pauli Murray taught us that our lives are not defined by our race or our gender but by our striving to make the world a better place than when we found it.  — Elnora J. Shields, Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project

Murray mural

Pauli Murray mural (detail) on tobacco warehouse in Durham NC

See also:

2013

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  • March.  With support from the Lilly Foundation, our rector Pamela Werntz left on her sabbatical pilgrimage to Iona, Scotland, several sites in the Holy Land, and Ste. Maxime, France, where she sought inspiration from Mary Magdalene. The Rev. Susan Ackley became our  Sabbatical Priest/Artist in Residence.
  • April 13.  Faculty from Leslie University’s Expressive Arts Therapy Program spoke after the service about how their students might assist with such programs as Emmanuel Cafe and Common Art.  Our Leslie interns have described their experiences since then in Musings from the Margins, the first post of which describes its founding in more detail.
  • April 15.  Two bombs exploded on Boylston Street near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others. Leslie students joined people at Emmanuel in creating memorial flags in an event called “When Words Are Not Enough.”
Participants in "Words Are Not Enough" carry prayer flags to the Boston Marathon bombing memorial site in Copley Square.

The Rev. Susan Ackley, our Sabbatical Priest/Artist-in-Residence, and participants in “Words Are Not Enough” carry prayer flags down Newbury Street to the Boston Marathon bombing memorial site in Copley Square.

2010

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  • InstitutionMarch 7.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz was installed as 12th rector with the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Shaw presiding.  See The Musical Intelligencer‘s interview with John Harbison, in which he discusses the history of Emmanuel Music, its founder Craig Smith, The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw, Pam’s musical background, and her dedication to our music program.
  • September.  Bishop Shaw presided at our celebration of the 150th anniversary of the church’s founding.
  • Ryan Turner became our Music Director and Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music.
  • Vintage Books published Mary Catherine Bateson‘s Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, in which she discusses the influence of our 9th rector, Al Kershaw (pp. 171-2 & 1979-80). See also Timeline:  1963 & 1969.

2009

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PL WerntzOur vestry called The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz to be our twelfth rector.

 

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The Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris blessed our new garden.

 

 

 

Brett Cook and others in Durham NC completed the installation of Face Up:  Telling Stories of Community Life, which includes five murals picturing The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Installed at 117 S. Buchanan Blvd. is “Soul Roots” with an inscription from Proud Shoes:  “It had taken me almost a lifetime to discover that true emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors”.

2008

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  • The Rev. Constance A. Hammond, our first woman warden, published Shalom/ Salaam/ Peace:  A Liberation Theology of Hope (Oakville CT:  Equinox) and gave our archives an autographed copy.
  • March 2. The Rev. Pamela L. Wentz arrived as priest in charge and preached her first sermon: “The Works:  God’s work is ours to do.”
  • Fall.  Hartney-Greymont of Needham prepared the beds and planted shrubs and perennials in our garden, which was designed by Susan Doolittle.  The stone paths were given in memory of vestry member Frank Rose.

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2005

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  • Feb. 5.  Harvard U. published Volume 5 of Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century.  Its editor Susan Ware wrote, “It may be that when historians look back at 20th century American history, all roads will lead to Pauli Murray. . .civil rights, feminism, religion, literature, law, sexuality – no matter what the subject, there is Pauli Murray.”
  • The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace retired as rector in protest of our bishop’s ban on priests officiating same-sex marriages. Bishop Tom Shaw sent The Rev. Dr. Maureen Kemeza as priest in charge.

 

2004

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Ball team with The Rev. Sara Irwin (front left), The Rev. Bill Blaine Wallace (back row, orange shirt) & Emmanuelites*

June 4. Boston Globe reported that The Rev. Dr. Willliam Blaine-Wallace had performed same-sex marriages despite The Rt. Rev. Thomas Shaw‘s proscription of such in the wake of a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in May, which had made them legal.

June 20. Boston Globe quoted Bill Blaine-Wallace, who supported the Rev. I. Carter Heyward in her retirement from out diocese saying,  “I want the wider community to know that a straight priest and mainstream parish are participating in constructive disobedience.”

July. Our vestry endorsed our rector’s disobedience with a statement, “Support for Same-Sex Marriage”.

Summer. Emmanuel fielded a team* for an interfaith wiffle-ball match on the Boston Common with First Church (Unitarian Universalist). Behind them are Polish freedom fighters in a sculpture called The Partisans, which has since been moved to the intersection of Congress & D Streets.

Rabbi Howard A. Berman

Bill Blaine-Wallace invited the nascent congregation Boston Jewish Spirit to hold its services as guests at Emmanuel.  Rabbi Howard A. Berman became Rabbi in Residence.  The first meetings of what would later become Central Reform Temple were held in our library.

*If you know any missing members of this line-up, please advise us:  archivist@EmmanuelBoston.org.

  • Back row from the left:  Margo Risk (seated), ??, Donald Langbein, Jimmy Tirrell (straw hat), ??, Bill Blaine-Wallace, Marianne Iauco & Mary Blocher
  • Front row:  Sara Irwin, Kelly Reed, Hugh Doherty?, Victoria Blaine-Wallace & David York.

1997

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  • The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace met Rabbi Howard A. Berman and began working together as the struggle for marriage equality began to unfold in Massachusetts.
  • Ryan Turner joined the chorus of Emmanuel Music as a tenor.
  • Having arrived in our parish in the early 1970s, Stephen Babcock served on our vestry for two years under the Rev. William Blaine Wallace. 

    Stephen Babcock welcomed congregants to our sanctuary for more than twenty years.

    Then following The Rev. Hugh Weaver’s suggestion, he began to serve as usher and welcome congregants on Sundays.  His ministry was to last more than two decades, until the Covid pandemic put an end to it.  Standing outside what we now call the Babcock Doors in all seasons, he greeted each parishioner by name and helped newcomers find their way. His smile and kindliness will be remembered by all who have been privileged to know him.

 

1996

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  • 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.BBW253

1988

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  • 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:

  1. Dana Greene.  Denise Levertov:  A Poet’s Life.  Urbana IL:  U. of Illinois Press, 2012.
  2. Denise Levertov.  Making Peace.  Breathing the Water.  NY:  New Directions, 1987.
  3. Donna Hollenberg.  A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2013.
  4. Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey, eds.  The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov.  NY: New Directions, 2013.
  5. Paul Philip Levertoff. Love and the Messianic Age.
  6. Timeline: 1994