Tag Archives: clergy

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.

1977

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January 8.    Pauli Murray was ordained a priest at the Washington National Cathedral by the Rt. Rev. William F. Creighton, bishop of the (Episcopal) Diocese of Washington. She was the first African American woman, and one of the first women, to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church.

February 13.  At the invitation of the rector of The Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill NC, the Rev. James Peter Lee, The Rev. Dr. Murray celebrated her first Eucharist.   She read from her grandmother Cornelia Smith‘s Bible, from a lectern that had been given in memory of the woman who had owned Cornelia, Mary Ruffin Smith. This was the first time a woman celebrated the Eucharist at an Episcopal church in North Carolina.  In her autobiography (1987), p. 435) Pauli described her thoughts about the service, which our Parish Historian Mary Chitty attended:

Whatever future ministry I might have as a priest, it was given to me that day to be a symbol of healing. All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner, I had already been called poet, lawyer, teacher, and friend. Now I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female – only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness.

See also:

1976

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  • 27 Jan. Craig Smith & Edward Simone conducted a free concert in celebration of Mozart’s 220th birthday.  With standing-room only in our sanctuary, soprano Jane Bryden brought the house down with Popoli di Tasaglia (K.318), which Globe correspondent Richard Buell deemed “flabbergasting [and] insouciant”. They celebrated Mozart’s birthday with a concert for years to come.  Lenny Matczynski, who later became its executive director, joined the orchestra of Emmanuel Music.

  • Pauli Murray received a Master of Divinity degree from General Theological Seminary.  She was then ordained a deacon in The Episcopal Church by The Rt. Rev. Morris F. Arnold, Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts.

  • The Episcopal Church, at its General Convention in Minneapolis, voted to ordain women as priests, beginning January 1, 1977.

Founding of This Blog

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While our rector Pamela Werntz traveled on her 2013 sabbatical, we also had opportunities to explore Spirituality and the Arts at Emmanuel (thanks to the generosity of the Lilly Foundation). A collaboration with Lesley University’s Expressive Arts Therapy program seemed like a perfect means of enriching the church’s mission for using the arts as vehicle for healing and spiritual growth. On April 7, 2013, faculty from Lesley joined us for the service and offered a stimulating presentation about their program and ideas for working with Emmanuel.

In order to build upon this exciting beginning, a group of Lesley University faculty met with representatives from Emmanuel to discuss our future collaborations. Between these two meetings, the bombings at The Boston Marathon resulted in feelings of pain, loss, fear, and anger. The group decided its first event should involve the healing power of creativity in addressing these wounds, and we called it “When Words Are Not Enough.”  Over the years since then our Expressive Therapy Interns have recorded their thoughts about their experiences at Emmanuel in this blog.

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.

1974

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  • The Rev. Dr. Mark Harvey began his jazz ministry and founded the Jazz Coalition (later the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra), which sponsored concerts, liturgies, and festivals here over the next four decades.  See also his Timeline of Jazz @ Emmanuel.
  • March 3.  As our sponsored seminarian, Pauli Murray preached from our pulpit her inaugural sermon on a passage she had selected (Isaiah 61: 1-4), entitled ” Women Seeking Admission to Holy Orders: As Crucifers Carrying the Cross”.* Saying that Emmanuel “sent me forth as a member of your congregation with your blessings and prayers to begin my training for the Sacred Ministry”, she asked:

Why in the face of the devastating rejection at the Louisville General Convention of last October, 1973–a rejection which Bishop Paul Moore of NY has called the violation of the very core of their personhood–[have the women seeking ordination to the priesthood] only increased their determination to enter the higher levels of the clergy?

Then paraphrasing Isaiah 53:3, she prophesied:

I believe that these women are in truth the Suffering Servants of Christ, despised and rejected, women of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  They are answering to a higher authority than that of the political structures of our Church, and in the fullness of time God will sweep away those barriers and free the Church to carry forward its mission of renewal as a living force and God’s witness in our society.

* Reprinted in Daughters of Thunder:  Black women preachers and their sermons, 1850-1979, Bettye Collier-Thomas (NY: Jossey Bass, 1998),  pp. 240-44.  Please see also About Pauli Murray and our Timeline entries about her:  1951,1970, 1973, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.

1973

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  • Pauli Murray, who was a vestry member, left her tenured position at Brandeis U. and  entered the General Theological Seminary. The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw had helped her discern a call to ordination.

Once I admitted the call of total commitment to service in the church, it seemed that I had been pointed in this direction all my life and that my experiences were merely preparation for this calling.  In spite of my own intellectual doubts and the opposition to women’s ordination which was widespread within the Episcopal Church at the time, I took the fateful step of applying to The Rt. Rev. John Melville Burgess, Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, for admission to holy orders. (Autobiography, 1989, p. 427)

  • Organ built by James Ludden, given by Priscilla Rawson Young in 1973

    4 Nov. Priscilla Rawson Young gave a portable pipe organ, built by James Ludden, which is still used for rehearsals in our Music Room.

See also:

  1. Pauli Murray and Timeline entries:  1970, 1977,1985, 1989, 2012 & 2015.
  2. Priscilla Young:  Timeline entries: 1909, 1939, 1942, 1971, 1994 & 2000.

1957

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6 Oct.  The Rt. Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes III, our 11th diocesan bishop, installed The Rev. Harold Bend Sedgwick as our eighth rector.

The rectory at 10 Chestnut St. was sold and an apartment at 388 Beacon St. was bought for his residence.  For more about the Sedgwick years please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.

1956

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  • Feb 15.  “Ole Miss” invited the Rev. Alvin Louis Kershaw to speak

on the subject of jazz, an area in which he was considered something of an expert. In the meantime, [he had become] a contestant on the television quiz show The $64,000 Question, where his expertise in the field of jazz helped him to win $32,000. In an interview after the program, he alluded to the possibility of donating a portion of his winnings to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to aid in the battle against segregation. When word of this reached Mississippi, the Rev. Kershaw became the target of a firestorm of criticism, which eventually led to cancellation of his scheduled visit to Ole Miss.

–Guide to his papers donated by his widow Doris to U. of Southern Mississippi, McCain Library and Archives.

  • His album Introduction to Jazz was released by Decca Records.  Our archive has a copy of the record, which contains “Selected recordings of great jazz stylists, with historical data and musical analyses” and these tunes:
      1. Snag it (King Oliver’s Savannah Syncopators)
      2. Wild man blues (Johnny Dodds’ Black Bottom Stompers)
      3. I’ve found a new baby (Chicago Rhythm Kings)
      4. Tin roof blues (New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
      5. Davenport blues (Adrian Rollini’s Orchestra)
      6. The blues jumped a rabbit (Jimmy Noone’s New Orleans Band)
      7. Five point blues (Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats)
      8. Perdido Street blues (Louis Armstrong)
      9. Georgia cake walk (Art Hodes and his band)
      10. Impromptu ensemble no. 1 (Bobby Hackett et al.)
      11. Tishomingo blues (Bunk Johnson)
      12. Chimes blues (George Lewis and his Ragtime Band).

See also Timeline entries:  1963, 1966, 1969.

Introduction to Jazz

 

  • March. Rector R.G. Metters in his annual report summarized the decade of his tenure, including:
    • Growth in communicants
    • Growth of investments by more than a quarter
    • Increase in pledges from $22K to almost $43K
    • Renovation of the church and parish house  at a cost of more than $115K
  • Oct. 1. Rector Metters resigned and later became headmaster of St. George’s School in Spokane WA.  The vestry appointed the Rev. David Siegenthaler priest-in-charge.

1948

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The Rev. Robert Gifford Metters

In connection with its  stewardship campaign the vestry ran a survey that revealed a reduced congregation of 375 communicants.  With his associate priest, the Rev. Dr. H. Robert Smith, Rector R.G. Metters began holding Healing Services on Wednesday mornings.  He was president of the Mass. Association for Mental Health for several years and a longtime member of the National Association.