March 10, 2024

In this second week of Women’s History Month, we celebrate The Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas, author, professor, and dedicated advocate of social justice. The Reverend Douglas, one of the first ten Black women to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, was a speaker at Emmanuel’s 2022 Pauli Murray conference. Douglas is currently Canon Theologian at the National Cathedral and Interim President of the Episcopal Divinity School.

Douglas spent the fall of 2023 as Honorary Professor of Global Theology at Emmanuel Theological College, one of the newest Anglican seminaries in the UK. While there, she traveled, spoke at events, met students and faculty at other institutions, and discussed the Church of England’s reparations efforts. Douglas said it was an opportune time to be engaged in discussions about inclusion and reparative social justice with UK colleagues. As reported here in the Episcopal News Service’s Press Release (February 1, 2024), Douglas expressed her hope for the future: “We strive for justice and the full inclusion of the diversity of God’s creation, and then unity follows.”

On the subject of reparations, the Church Commissioners for England have issued their report, “Church Commissioners’ Research into Historic Links to Transatlantic Chattel Slavery.” Various news reports last week covered the report’s findings. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, commented that this work was the beginning of “a multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement.”
(See Reuters, March 4, 2024)

–Mary Beth Clack, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin, Mary Blocher
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church March 14 & 21, 2024