Tag Archives: Native Americans

Help, like an atheist!

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Lent 4B, 10 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Numbers 21: 4-9.  Look at the serpent of bronze and live.
  • Ephesians 2: 1-10.  For by grace you have been saved.
  • John 3: 14-21.  For God loved the world like this.

O God of love, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

The historical and contemporary misunderstandings and mistreatments of our Gospel lesson this morning are almost too much for me to bear. I knew when Deacon Bob read this passage to you this morning, many of you would start shutting down, going other places in your heads, perhaps leaving the building in your imagination. He had asked me if I wanted to make any edits to what he would read, but frankly I didn’t know where to begin. There are so many edits I want to make, and I’m not sure any amount of editing could solve all the problems in this passage. So perhaps I can bring your imagination back into the building with this First Nations Version rendering of John 3:14-2, a dynamic equivalence translation, which was published a few years ago. That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s a translation focused on retelling the dynamics of the story, not attempting a word-for-word translation of the original. The context for this scene is that Nicodemus, a religious leader in Jerusalem has come to Jesus in the night to learn more about him and his ministry. I’ve made a few more edits to it, so I want you to notice whether and how you respond differently when you hear the Gospel story this way: [1] Continue reading →

1878

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The Rev. Dr. Leighton Parks became our third rector.TimeLineLeightonparksHead1

He requested free seats at afternoon services, which required releases of pew holders’ rights. For biographical information on Dr. Parks please see the chapter on him in Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years.

 

The Dakota League was incorporated into the Massachusetts branch of the Women’s Auxiliary to the Episcopal Board of Missions, which had formed in 1871. Since its founding here in 1864, the League had raised $56K for Native Americans and $8500 for freedmen, according to the Boston Evening Transcript of 18 October.

1864

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The Rev. Mary Douglass Burnham, 1899, by permission of SUNY Upstate Medical University

Having learned of a recent massacre of Sioux Indians from her friend Evelina Bogart of Albany NY,  parishioner Mary Douglass Saville (Mrs. Wesley) Burnham (1832-1904) founded the Dakota League,  a mission of our diocese (and eventually other Boston-area churches) to support Native Americans in the Dakota Territory.

Isabella Gardner

Isabella Stewart Gardner by John Singer Sargent, courtesy of the Gardner Museum via WikiCommons

April 10.  Isabella Stewart Gardner was confirmed at Emmanuel by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Manton Eastburn, Bishop of Massachusetts.  It was the fourth anniversary of her marriage to John Lowell (Jack) Gardner, Jr., who had purchased Pew 28  in 1862.  Although the Stewarts had been members of Grace Church in New York City, their children were not confirmed until they reached adulthood. Louise Hall Tharp in her biography Mrs. Jack hypothesizes that Isabella’s confirmation “might have been a sort of thank-offering for the child she so much wanted”.  John Lowell 3rd, born on June 18, 1863, unfortunately died on March 15, 1865. His baptism and burial are recorded in our parish register. The Gardners, who lived nearby at 152 Beacon St., later raised their orphaned nephews, sons of Jack’s brother Joseph, also owned a pew until his death in 1875.

Take a visual tour of her museum and its collection at Google’s Cultural Institute.