Timeline of History at Emmanuel

We’re interested to learn of significant dates and events involving Emmanuelites past and present. Please email archivist@emmanuelboston.org about the details of your Emmanuel timeline.

See also

Select one of these years to jump to a decade in this chronology and then Previous or Next to move up or down by years:

1860 | 1875 | 1885 | 1895 | 1905 | 1915 | 1925 | 1935 | 1945 |

1955 | 1965 | 1975 | 1985 | 1995 | 2005 | 2015 | 2020 | History.

1994

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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 →

1990

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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

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  • 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

Image by Daderot, WikiCommons, of her sculpture at the Museum School, Boston

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

 

1987

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See also:

1986

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  • Our vestry adopted a resolution on inclusive language and welcomed changes in the language of liturgy and hymns.

  • Constance Hammond helping Gabriela Perez get a haircut, 1983. Photo credit: Michael Thompson & Hillsboro (OR) Argus

    Ordained as a deacon in our diocese,The Rev. Constance Hammond launched its Refugee Immigration Ministry, which continues to provide community-based support to individuals and families who have been uprooted by violence. In the summer of 1983, between semesters at Harvard Divinity School, she had worked with people in the Latino community in Portland, Oregon. We are proud to have sponsored her for the priesthood.

  • 19 August. Constance Rulison Worcester, daughter of our 4th rector, Elwood Worcester, died.  She had converted his rectory at 186 Marlborough St. to affordable housing for seniors. Bequeathed to an organization overseen by the Episcopal City Mission, it still provides affordable housing.

See also 1978.

 

1985

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  • Jan. Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot joined our vestry for a 3-year term during the tenure of Rector Al Kershaw.  
  • March 31. Our own composer John Harbison preached on the 300th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach.
  • July 1. The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray died in Pittsburg PA at the age of 75.  She is buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, beside her partner Irene Barlow, whose death in 1972 had led Murray to discern a call to the priesthood at Emmanuel. The Episcopal Church has designated July 1st as her feast day.

See also:

1984

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  • The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts 1784-1984: A Mission to Remember, Proclaim, and Fulfill by Mark J. Duffy, Director of the Archives of the Episcopal Church, was published by our diocese with references to our missions.  Bard R. Hamlen wrote its chapter on Emmanuel (pp. 162-6).
  • June.  Carolyn Roosevelt joined the Parish Choir, directed by Andy Castiglione, and has been its faithful soprano ever since.

1978

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  • 21 April.  Gov. Michael Dukakis proclaimed it to be Johann Sebastian Bach Day in the Commonwealth as “the orchestra and chorus of Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston…after seven years [had] completed for the first time in the USA the cycle of [his]194 sacred cantatas”.

  • Constance visited us in Oct. 2017

    Constance Hammond was elected our first woman (junior) warden. After ordination in our diocese, she served as rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR (1990-98) and then as rector and priest in other churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon Since 1998, she has been a practitioner and instructor in the Healing Touch Program.  See also:  1986.