Tag Archives: Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray on Women’s Ordination

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July 24th, 2024

Our upcoming Chapel Camp on July 29, 2024, will mark the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women as priests in the Episcopal Church. The first ordination of women took place on July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia.

The litany written by our Assistant Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Carol Gallagher, for this commemorative year emphasizes both the struggles and firmness of faith of the Philadelphia 11 and the brave women who followed the path to ordination.

We write today about Pauli Murray’s contributions to the movement for women’s ordination a few years leading up to 1974. Pauli actively championed women’s issues before considering her own ordination as the first African American woman to become a priest in 1977. She described her efforts in this way:

“The burgeoning women’s movement absorbed much of my energies, for I was serving on a faculty committee to improve the status of women at Brandeis, on the national board of the ACLU to win support for the ERA, and on the Commission on Women organized by Church Women United and chaired by my good friend Thelma Stevens.” (Song in a Weary Throat, p. 545) Continue reading →

Blessed Pauli Murray

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Feast of Pauli Murray.  9 July. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Sirach 15:1-6. They will lean on her and not fall.
  • Galatians 3:23-29. There is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male and female.
  • Mark 12:1-12.  The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone [or keystone]; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing.

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

Today is a long-anticipated, special day at Emmanuel Church because we are celebrating the Feast Day of The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray with the unveiling of a statue of her, beautifully rendered by our Artist-in-Residence Ted Southwick. The statue is installed on the sanctuary pulpit, from which Dr. Murray preached. We are thrilled and honored to welcome her niece Rosita Stevens-Holsey, who will speak with us after the service. While Dr. Murray’s feast day is July 1, the day that she completed her earthly mission, today is the 112th anniversary of her baptism at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Just prior to being ordained, she had described herself as: woman, Christian, seminarian, poet, lawyer, person of color, and senior citizen. Last week in Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in the bigoted-website case, she recalled Murray’s pioneering work with regard to public accommodations.[1] I want to assure you that Pauli Murray is still speaking to us all. Continue reading →

Freedom is a dream.

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Proper 9B. July 4, 2021

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10. Look, we are your bone and flesh. [Take us in].
2 Corinthians 12:2-10. My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.
Mark 6:1-13. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

O Dreamer of Freedom, 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.

Sometimes people at Emmanuel wonder what a lesson like the one from 2 Samuel has to do with the Gospel (or anything else in the service). It’s a great question that often comes from experiencing a lifetime of lectionary reading selections that used to fit neatly together, in which Christians appropriated the First Testament to serve the Second Testament. That has changed somewhat with the Episcopal Church’s use of the Revised Common Lectionary. 
Continue reading →

Sing the songs of Love!

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The Feast of All Saints
November 1, 2020

Revelation 7:9-17. These are they who have come out of the great ordeal.
1 John 3:1-3. See what love [God] has given us
Matthew 5:1-12. Blessed . . . blessed . . . blessed

O God of all saints, 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.

Today we observe the Feast of All Saints in the Church, with a special celebration of “A Saint for All Saints, The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray,” the first Black woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, sponsored for ordination by Emmanuel Church before any woman had been ordained in the Episcopal Church. I hope that you will be able to join our webinar program at 4:00 this afternoon about her life and legacy – there’s still time to register by going to Emmanuel’s web page. You may also want to download the program booklet.
Continue reading →

2009

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PL WerntzOur vestry called The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz to be our twelfth rector.

 

bishopblessing253

 

 

 

 

The Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris blessed our new garden.

 

 

 

Brett Cook and others in Durham NC completed the installation of Face Up:  Telling Stories of Community Life, which includes five murals picturing The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Installed at 117 S. Buchanan Blvd. is “Soul Roots” with an inscription from Proud Shoes:  “It had taken me almost a lifetime to discover that true emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors”.

2004

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Ball team with The Rev. Sara Irwin (front left), The Rev. Bill Blaine Wallace (back row, orange shirt) & Emmanuelites

June 4. Boston Globe reported that The Rev. Dr. Willliam Blaine-Wallace had performed same-sex marriages despite The Rt. Rev. Thomas Shaw‘s proscription of such in the wake of a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in May, which had made them legal.

June 20. Boston Globe quoted Bill Blaine-Wallace, who supported the Rev. I. Carter Heyward in her retirement from out diocese saying,  “I want the wider community to know that a straight priest and mainstream parish are participating in constructive disobedience.”

July. Our vestry endorsed our rector’s disobedience with a statement, “Support for Same-Sex Marriage”.

Summer. Emmanuel fielded a team* for an interfaith wiffle-ball match on the Boston Common with First Church (Unitarian Universalist). Behind them are Polish freedom fighters in a sculpture called The Partisans, which has since been moved to the intersection of Congress & D Streets.

Rabbi Howard A. Berman

Bill Blaine-Wallace invited the nascent congregation Boston Jewish Spirit to hold its services as guests at Emmanuel.  Rabbi Howard A. Berman became Rabbi in Residence.  The first meetings of what would later become Central Reform Temple were held in our library.

*If you know any missing members of this line-up, please advise us:  archivist@EmmanuelBoston.org.

  • Back row from the left:  Margo Risk (seated), ??, Donald Langbein, Jimmy Tirrell (straw hat), ??, Bill Blaine-Wallace, Marianne Iauco & Mary Blocher
  • Front row:  Sara Irwin, Kelly Reed, Hugh Doherty?, Victoria Blaine-Wallace & David York.

1910

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  • In an ongoing summertime effort, semi-weekly harbor excursions to Bass Point, Nahant, were arranged for about 800 parishioners and their friends.
  • 20 Nov.   Anna Pauline Murray was born in Baltimore MD.  Pauli (as she became known) was to become famous civil-rights lawyer, a member of our vestry, our postulant for Holy Orders, and a saint of The Episcopal Church. For details of her many accomplishments, please see our guide to resources about her.