Tag Archives: Emmanuel Movement

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Epiphany 4A, January 29, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Micah 6:1-8 [God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Matthew 5:1-12 Blessed…blessed…blessed.

O God of the strangest blessings, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

What a week. The other day, one of my colleagues asked a group of Central Boston clergy, “how are you preaching in times like these?” The swift and wise answer from another esteemed colleague was, “stay close to the Bible.” At first, I thought, “hey, my approach to preaching may be coming back into style!” That thought was quickly followed by my memory of a scene from the 1974 movie, Young Frankenstein, in which Frau Blücher, carrying a candelabra with three unlit candles warns, “stay close to the candles…the stairway can be treacherous!” But staying close to the sacred story, the Bible doesn’t work so well without the illumination of wisdom and learning, without the illumination of engagement of diverse communities across space and time, and without the illumination of Love (capital L). Wisdom and learning. Engagement of diverse communities. Love. If those three candles are lit, the stairway to the realm of God is not so treacherous. Continue reading →

1919

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  • Mary Robeson Sargent died of diabetes at the age of 66.
  • Courtenay Baylor (1870-1947) published Remaking a Man: One Successful Method of Mental Refitting (NY: Moffat, Yard), full text.  Recently helped by our fourth rector Elwood Worcester, Baylor gave up his insurance business to join the Emmanuel staff in 1912.  Under Worcester’s supervision he became a lay therapist for alcoholics.CourtneyBaylor253

In 1925 he and Worcester formed the Craigie Foundation to continue their work privately in anticipation of Worcester’s retirement from Emmanuel Church in 1929.  In his book, Baylor claimed he had success with about two thirds of a thousand patients.  Through his patients Rowland Hazard and Richard R. Peabody he influenced William Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

For more information on Baylor’s contribution see:

  • “The Continuation of Therapy:  Courtenay Baylor and Richard R. Peabody”, pp. 35-59 in Richard M. Dubiel, The Road to Fellowship:  The Role of the Emmanuel Movement and the Jacoby Club in the Development of Alcoholics Anonymous (NY:iUniverse for the Hindsfoot Foundation, 2004).
  • “Worcester in Retirement and Successors to the Emmanuel Movement”, pp. 99-108 in Sanford Gifford, The Emmanuel Movement:  The Origins of Group Treatment and the Assault on Lay Psychotherapy (Boston: Harvard U. Press for the Francis Countway Library of Medicine, 1997).
  • “Early alcoholism treatment: the Emmanuel Movement and Richard Peabody”, K. McCarthy. Journal of Studies on Alcohol 45(1):59-74, Jan. 1984. PMID:  6366377.

1909

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  • Thanks to the late Craig Smith for this image of Priscilla as a girl, c1915.

    7 May.  Benefactor of our cantata program, Priscilla Rawson (Young) was born in Bayside, NYC to Clementine Herschel of Holyoke MA & Hobart Rawson of Cincinnati OH. She was named for her Mayflower ancestor Priscilla Mullins Alden, who in turn was the namesake of Priscilla, now thought to have been the amanuensis of Paul the Apostle and author of the Epistle to the Hebrews [1].  See also 1939, 1942, 1971, 1973, 1994 & 2000.

  • Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb published The Christian Religion as a Healing Power: A Defense and Exposition of the Emmanuel Movement (NY: Moffat, Yard), full text.  It is an addendum to their Religion and Medicine:  The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders (NY: Moffat, Yard, 1908), full text.
  • Parishioner Ernest Jacoby started a group for alcoholic men with special emphasis on fellowship as a path to recovery.  It eventually moved from our basement and continued into the 1930s as the Jacoby Club.  The first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Boston was held in 1940 at the Club, then at 115 Newbury Street.

  • Entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

    The first section of parishioner Guy Lowell‘s design for the Museum of Fine Arts was completed. Lowell (1870-1927) also designed the Charles River Dam (built in 1910) and the Esplanade from the Charlesgate to the dam.  For more about him and his other architectural achievements, please see Wikipedia.

 

 

 

1. Ruth Hoppin, Priscilla’s Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Ft. Bragg CA: Lost Coast Press, 2000.

1908

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In response to a devastating fire in Chelsea, Emmanuel Church rented one of the few houses left standing to provide care for the homeless.   The Emmanuel Relief Station offered food, clothing, and medical care for the wounded.  The church arranged for medical personnel, instruments, and supplies. The house was also used for the care of women during and after childbirth.

Religion and Medicine: The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders by Worcester, Samuel McComb and Isador A. Coriat, an early psychoanalyst, was published by Moffat, Yard.

Worcester published a series of six articles about the Emmanuel Movement in the Ladies Home Journal (Oct. 1908 – March 1909).

1904

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  • Leighton Parks was called to St. Bartholomew’s, New York City.

    The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester

  • The Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester was called as our fourth rector.  He had received a PhD. from the University of Leipzig, where he studied psychology under Wilhelm Wundt and Gustav Fechner.  Upon his arrival he started the Emmanuel Class for Tuberculosis, which became the basis for what the press named the Emmanuel Movement.
  • Architect Arthur Lawrence Rotch became junior warden.

For more about the Worcester years please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.

For more about the Emmanuel Movement please search our site or see Timeline entries:  1905, 1909 & 1919.

1900

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Joseph Hersey Pratt, M.D. (1872-1956)

Dr. Joseph H. Pratt joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and served as secretary of Ascension Chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew.  He reported in the Year Book of Emmanuel Parish that members of its Sailors Committee visited about a dozen vessels per month to distribute literature and invite men to the mission church.  See also his later role in founding the Emmanuel Movement.