Episcopal Church
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THE WORD “SERMON,” like “lecture,” is an ambiguous one: both a genre of speech and a shorthand for our worst ways of speaking to one another. Outside of a religious context (and to be honest, sometimes even inside one), who wants to be preached at?
Those connotations of arrogance and superiority likely come from authentic experience. But they also miss something important about the sermon as a genre: its foundation in humility, in the practices of reading, reflecting on, and speaking on someone else’s text.
In his 1990 farewell sermon as pastor of Concord Baptist Church in New York, Gardner C. Taylor, one of the great preachers of the civil rights era, asked for forgiveness “if I ever tried to make the Word of God mean what I wanted it to mean.” Sermons (in Christian tradition, as well as in my Jewish tradition) are public acts of commentary. And, as Taylor reminds us, serious commentary is a morally consequential act, because it requires putting one’s own priorities and intentions second to those of the text, an act which is always, at least a little, selfless. At the heart of a sermon is the tension between what the text seems to say and what the preacher wants to say with the text.
When I read or listen to a sermon — even one as politically memorable as Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at the national prayer service following President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 — I try to keep that basic question in mind: What text is she preaching on?
The U.S. Mint released the Pauli Murray (1910-1985) quarter in February, which includes Murray's likeness and the line, "Hope...a song in a weary throat." Lawyer, activist, and poet, and the first Black woman ordained as a Episcopal priest, Murray used he/she/they pronouns. / Candace Sanders / Sojourners
I’M EXCITED THAT more people will come to know Pauli by holding this piece of currency in their hands. Many folks feel connected to Pauli through her faith leadership, her Blackness, their queer identity, or their southern identity. That quarter represents so many things but when you flip it over, there’s that guy on the other side: George Washington. It feels a little strange. It’s also connected to our capitalist system, which is a bit odd. I don’t want our ancestors to become deities because it flattens them. That is a piece of my struggle with this quarter. “St. Pauli” certainly is a saint, but I want Pauli to remain whole and human. I don’t want them to be deified or objectified.
In the early 1970s, Francine Gurtler entered St. Faith’s Home for Unwed Mothers at the age of 14. St. Faith’s was located next door to Christ’s Church San Marco in Tarrytown, N.Y., and operated within the New York Diocese of the Episcopal Church. It transitioned into a children’s home in 1973 and is pictured here in the 1980s. Courtesy the Westchester County Historical Society.
The Episcopal Church’s executive council voted to form a committee to investigate the church’s involvement with forced adoptions that occurred between the 1940s and ’70s.
A collage of photos made by Tiarra Lucas/Sojourners. In center, Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh with her daughter at the Florence Crittenton Home in Washington, D.C., ten days after she was born on July 22, 1966. Courtesy Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh. Upper- and Bottom-left, photos of several babies in maternity homes (location unknown). Courtesy the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. Background image, St. Faith’s House, in New York, in 1983. Courtesy Westchester County Historical Society.
When Francine Gurtler gave birth at age 15, she felt like she lost her voice. Gurtler lived at an Episcopal home for unwed mothers and said the workers of the home coerced her into placing her baby for adoption. “They literally took him from my arms,” she said. The adoption record notes she was “tearful,” but Gurtler said, “I was sobbing, hysterically, uncontrollably, on the ground begging the social worker to let me keep my baby.”
St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Davis, Calif., became carbon neutral in 2021. The church has made efforts to remove grass and plant native, low-water plant species across its 2.6-acre campus. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service
Then, when the heat went out, so did the reluctance to put an end to the parish’s dependence on fossil fuels. The parish installed an all-electric heat pump system, replaced functioning gas-powered appliances with electric versions and installed a third solar array. By 2021, St. Martin’s had become carbon neutral and was certified by Interfaith Power & Light as a “cool congregation.”
In the last century, Southern California has warmed by three degrees. The region is increasingly vulnerable to water scarcity, wildfires and coastal erosion. Small changes like those on St. Mary’s campus are an integral part of the wider Episcopal Church’s response to climate change. Photo: Courtesy of St. Mary’s
Over the past two years, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which sits on a hill four blocks away from the Pacific Ocean in Laguna Beach, Calif., has overhauled its property, adding drought-resistant native plants to its gardens and installing a drip irrigation system to avoid water runoff.
Rt. Rev. Allen K. Shin outside New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine / Cathedral archives
Rt. Rev. Allen K. Shin is the bishop suffragan for the Episcopal Diocese of New York. This excerpt is from a speech Shin delivered in New York City on March 23 following the killing of eight people, six of them women of Asian ancestry, in Atlanta.
“WHEN THE PANDEMIC began, it didn’t take long for the anti-Asian violence to begin. The violence of calling the virus ‘China virus’ and ‘kung flu’ by the highest political office holder of this nation only helped stoke the fire and put fuel on the hatred against Asians.
I have been called racist epithets many times before. I have been told to go back home many times before. But never have I felt fearful for my life as I have during this pandemic of hatred and violence against Asians. While the overall crime rate has declined from 2019 to 2020, hate crimes against Asians have increased nearly 150 percent in [16] major U.S. cities—and 68 percent of the victims have been Asian women.
Image via Flikr/ Mary Constance
Meyers: A revised prayer book could give us new ways of imagining God and understanding ourselves as children of God. It could be a real force for proclamation of the gospel to people who don’t necessarily think of themselves as Christian. I think it can give us a much deeper understanding and appreciation of creation and our role in caring for creation. We have some of that in the prayer book now, but in a time when the world is literally on fire and we are at a huge ecological crisis, it could, because of the power of language, subtly reshape our understanding and relationship to the world in which we live in a way that might enable us to take better care of it.
Image via Flickr / Thomas Hawk
And the Book of Proverbs maintains that the feminine figure of Holy Wisdom, Sophia, assisted God during the creation of the world.
Illustration by Faith-Marie Zamblé
Bio: Bill Terry is rector of St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans. In 2007, he started to list the names of individuals recently murdered in the city on a board outside of the church’s building. The church sees the “murder board” as a public memorial, a way to humanize victims of urban violence.
Website: stannanola.org
1. What inspired the murder board? When we talk about murder in the United States, we tend to talk in terms of numbers. Cities talk in terms of a murder rate, which is dehumanizing. We thought we would start listing the names of murder victims rather than numbers. We used to have the names printed, but the printers couldn’t keep up, so we started writing them down. We list the names, the age, and whether the individual was shot or stabbed. That has a visceral impact and, in and of itself, tells a story. There’s nothing glorious about it. It’s a holy site, and people have a holy response to it. Through the board, we began to humanize the deep loss in our city.
2. What impact does the board have? It’s hard to be a Republican or a Democrat when looking at the murder board. It’s hard to be accusing and making aspersions against a race, community, or economic class. More than 2,000 names are on that board alone. They are [people murdered] from 2007 to 2012 in a city of less than 500,000. And during that period, our population got as low as 350,000. I had a police officer who came here and noticed the permanent memorial. He asked if it was all the murders in the state, and I said no, it’s [murders] in New Orleans. He was shocked. Then he went over and started reading the board from left to right. He spent about 20 minutes just slowly walking along the board. He walked back to me, very quiet, tears in his eyes. He said, “I counted three guys I went to high school with. I had no idea, Father.” Then he quietly walked away. That’s the transformative power of our public exhibition.
My son Samson stood in front of our pew. One of the men in the congregation knelt and fixed his bow tie. The Sunday morning sunlight was streaming through the stained glass and the skylight. I hugged friends.This is going to be good, right? I prayed . Please, Lord, I hope we’re doing the right thing.
On Aug. 13 we renamed and blessed my son, Samson Red Gabriel. Samson is transgender. That week we had gone to court to legally change his name and gender, and that week he turned 10. That Sunday held the joy of five baptisms, all the hilarity and devotion that goes along with that, and this incredible rite that had never been done before in the Episcopal Church. As far as we know, nothing like it had been done for a child in a mainline church before, period.
Image via Heidi Besen/Shutterstock.com
I’m grateful for the 10 governors — Republican and Democrat — who wrote to senators asking them to reject the so-called “skinny repeal” because of how it would affect their residents.
I’m grateful for the thousands of you who heeded Sojourners’ call and contacted your member of Congress to voice your opposition to any bill that would hurt the poor with devastating cuts to Medicaid.
Image via RNS/David Gibson
Critical to the success of the movement is the fact that corporations are not simply tolerating activists such as Daly.
Instead, they increasingly see the socially responsible agenda as good business; and, perhaps more important, so do investment firms that are responding to the growing demand for portfolios that reflect a client’s values while also making money as effectively as any other investment.
Image via RNS/Francisco Daum via Creative Commons
Washington National Cathedral was founded in 1907 and envisioned as a “Westminster Abbey for America,” which, in part, is why it finds itself at the center of controversy about its role in President-elect Donald J. Trump’s impending inauguration.
For more than a century, the cathedral has tried to stand in two worlds at once, attempting to be both a practicing Christian church and a gathering place for American civic expression. As the cathedral’s former dean, I believe that fidelity to the former role now requires rejecting the latter.
Image via RNS/Reuters/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
I fear now, as I have feared for months, the impact of his presidency on vulnerable people — including the white and working-class voters in places like my home state of Ohio who lent him their support.
Christians always have disagreements about policy proposals or party platforms during election seasons. But this year, I wonder how white Christians who read the same Scriptures and hold many of the same beliefs that I do could support a man who in word and deed has flaunted the core teachings of our faith.
Image via RNS/Charlie Simokaitis
The Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis has elected the first black, female diocesan bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church.
The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, director of networking in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, was elected on the second ballot, during a diocesan convention held at Christ Church Cathedral Indianapolis on Oct. 28.
Image via Rev. Jeff Bunke / RNS
Orange isn’t a traditional liturgical color in the Episcopal Church.
But on Sunday, June 5, Episcopal clergy across the country are planning to wear orange stoles as a stand against gun violence, inspired by the Wear Orange campaign.
Anna Paulina Murray. Image via Carolina Digital Library and Archives / Yale / RNS
A new residential college at Yale University has been named for an Episcopal saint who was the first African-American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest.
Anna Pauline Murray, known as “Pauli,” was also civil rights activist who helped shape the legal argument for the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. She was the co-founder of the National Organization for Women and received an advanced law degree from Yale in 1965 and an honorary doctorate from Yale Divinity School in 1979.
Image via Christian Mueller/Shutterstock.com
If we who are Christians participate in the political process and in the public discourse as we are called to do — the New Testament tells us that we are to participate in the life of the polis, in the life of our society — the principle on which Christians must vote is the principle, Does this look like love of neighbor? If it does, we do it; if it doesn’t, we don’t.
We evaluate candidates based on that. We evaluate public policy based on that. And that has nothing to do with whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, liberal or conservative. It has to do with if you say you’re a follower of Jesus, then you enter the public sphere based on the principle of love which is seeking the good and the welfare of the “other.” That’s a game-changer.
Archbishop Eliud Wabukala. Image via Fredrick Nzwili / RNS
The Anglican Church in Kenya has become the latest province to announce it will boycott the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Zambia over the participation of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church was recently censured at a primates’ meeting in Canterbury, England, because of the American church’s willingness to ordain and marry LGBT people. According to the sanctions, the Episcopal Church cannot represent the communion at the April meeting or vote on doctrine and polity.