Latest News

[Episcopal News Service] A concert opera honoring Bishop John Henry Hobart will make its world debut May 31 at Trinity Church in New York.  The church’s Trinity Choir and Downtown Voices choral ensembles will perform the piece with its new music chamber ensemble, NOVUS. Melissa Attebury, Trinity’s music director, will conduct the 50-minute work, which features two soloists depicting Hobart and a narrator, and organ and piano. Trinity commissioned David Hurd, music director at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Manhattan, to compose the choral work, “Great Awakenings: John Henry Hobart and America,” in celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary. A concert opera is a full-length opera production presented on a stage without theatrical sets, costumes or acting. “Everybody knows about [Founding Father] Alexander Hamilton, who’s buried at Trinity Churchyard, from history books and, of course, the Broadway musical … but very few people know that buried nearby is Hobart, another historical figure,” Hurd, a cradle Episcopalian who previously served as an organist and sexton at Trinity, told Episcopal News Service. Hobart, whose Episcopal feast day is celebrated on Sept. 12, was Trinity’s seventh rector (1816 – 1830) and a co-founder of the General Theological Seminary. He served as the third diocesan bishop of New York, when the diocese covered the entire state, from 1816 until his death in 1830 at 54. He is buried beneath the chancel inside Trinity. Hobart also was instrumental in founding the college that now bears his name, Hobart College, in Geneva, New York. Additionally, he’s the namesake of Hobart, a town in Delaware County, New York. He founded parishes throughout New York state during his episcopate – including St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem, the first Black Episcopal church in New York City – and is remembered in the church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts as “one of the leaders who revived The Episcopal Church, following the first two decades of its independent life after the American Revolution.” The church had fewer than 10,000 members by the end of the war because it was still a part of the Church of England, which was loyal to King George III. “Hobart tried to bring all types of people into The Episcopal Church,” Long Island Assisting Bishop William Franklin, former bishop of Western New York, told ENS in an email. “We know that he was a wonderful preacher … and he made people leave church feeling joyful and happy.” Franklin is also a church historian who taught at the General Theological Seminary at the same time as Hurd. He pitched the idea of a musical work on Hobart’s life and legacy ahead of the United States’s 250th anniversary to Trinity in 2024. Hurd, a renowned composer and organist, colleague and friend, was the natural commissioning choice. The libretto, which was written by Christopher Dylan Herbert, a former Trinity Choir member, includes quotes from Hobart’s sermons, Scripture and hymns. It divides “Great Awakenings” into four separate but interconnected movements: Hobart’s vision and flaws; his hopes to create a more democratic church; preaching the Gospel in Hobart’s own words; and Hobart’s heritage. Although “Great Awakenings” is meant to honor and highlight Hobart’s accomplishments and radical views for his time, Franklin and Hurd both stressed the importance of acknowledging his shortcomings early in the piece. For example, Hobart commissioned an Oneida translation of the Book of Common Prayer. He also engaged in missionary work with the Oneida Native Americans and helped them relocate to Wisconsin after they were forced to leave New York. However, he never advocated for preventing or stopping their relocation. He also ordained the Rev. Peter Williams Jr., the second Black Episcopal priest, but he never publicly denounced slavery, even though he was personally against it. These contrasting ideas are highlighted in the first movement in a sung dialogue, with the mezzo soprano narrator listing some of Hobart’s accomplishments and the chorus responding by listing his shortcomings. The tenor soloist depicting Hobart doesn’t sing until the second movement. “Slavery was normal in Hobart’s time. It wasn’t good; it wasn’t righteous, and we know now what a horrible thing this common practice was, but only the most courageous people were speaking out against it at the time,” Hurd said. “His work needs to be regarded in its own context as having been in the right direction.” In the third movement, the choir quotes Psalm 137. During the fourth moment, Attebury will invite the audience to join the chorus in singing part of a hymn that was sung at Hobart’s funeral. Throughout the piece, a clarinet solo will accompany the tenor as he sings Hobart’s lines. While listening to “Great Awakenings,” Hurd said he hopes the audience and performers will be “present in the moment” while they reflect on Hobart’s legacy. In his own reflection, Hurd said he thinks Hobart would feel “embarrassed that all this fuss is being made over him.” “Somehow, I don’t imagine Hobart as being a self-absorbed person who would be comfortable with a lot of praise,” Hurd said. “I think he’d tell us to read the Gospel and answer our callings. He wore all the vestments, but at the bottom level, I think he was more interested in getting out and fulfilling God’s mission than basking in glory.” -Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at [email protected].

People around the world experiencing conflict, crisis and trauma need mental health support to prevent severe, lifelong effects. CWS’s locally led, trauma-informed mental health programs help people affected by crisis cope, recover and begin to rebuild their lives. Mental health is as essential to well-being as physical health. For people around the world who have been exposed to displacement, disaster, ... Read More

Ignacio Packer serves as executive director of the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, located in Caux-sur-Montreux, Switzerland. He took time to reflect on the foundation’s priorities, the uniqueness of Caux forums, and what sustains his hope. 

Church leaders in Kenya have joined the rest of the country in mourning, after a night fire tore through a school dormitory, killing 16 young girls.

The Christian Council of Norway published a statement expressing deep concern over the severe underreporting of the situation in Sudan in the Norwegian media. "We cannot accept that this is happening on our watch,” the statement reads. “Every human being is created in the image of God and has inviolable worth.” 

In a series of global prayers for peace, the World Council of Churches (WCC) invites people and churches around the world to join in the Global Prayer for Peace in Ukraine on 11 June at 13.00 CET.

Every 28 May, International Menstrual Hygiene Day draws global attention to what many institutions still decline to name. On 4 June, the World Council of Churches (WCC) goes further – hosting “Breaking the Blood Taboo,” a 90-minute online webinar, now in its fifth year, that moves from acknowledgement to accountability. Church leaders, youth leaders, and menstrual health advocates are invited to ask what they actually provide—and what they do not. 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches on Health and Healing sent a delegation to participate in the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva from 17-23 May. 

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of South Carolina is using seed money from The Episcopal Church to launch its first capital campaign since resolving a property lawsuit with a breakaway group in 2022. The new fundraising is seen both as a way to invest in the Charleston-based diocese’s own priorities, like congregational revitalization and racial reconciliation, and as a pilot program for supporting other dioceses’ capital campaigns. “There’s a lot of energy right now in the diocese around finally being in resurrection,” South Carolina Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley said in an interview with Episcopal News Service. Woodliff-Stanley was consecrated as the diocese’s bishop in October 2021. Six months later, a state Supreme Court issued a split decision in the legal battle between the diocese and the breakaway group now affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America. The ruling ordered the return of some church properties to the Episcopal diocese while allowing ACNA to keep other properties that formerly had been occupied by Episcopal congregations. Since then, the Episcopal diocese has developed a strategic plan with three parts: re-establish Episcopal congregations at the properties that were returned, plant and grow new congregations in communities where properties were not returned and support historically African American congregations that have long been disenfranchised because of the diocese’s past complicity with racist systems dating back to the transatlantic slave trade. While the diocese was considering ways to fund its strategic vision, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe took office in November 2024 and began promoting greater churchwide support for dioceses and congregations. At a House of Bishops meeting, Rowe mentioned to Woodliff-Stanley he was interested in reviving a late 1970s and 1980s fundraising model. Started by then-Presiding Bishop John Allin, it was called Venture in Mission and entailed churchwide staff coordinating more closely with diocesan leaders to meet local ministry needs. Woodliff-Stanley volunteered South Carolina as a kind of pilot program, and the Rev. Charles Robertson, senior adviser to the presiding bishop, was assigned to help. Under the new program, The Episcopal Church has provided the seed money for the Diocese of South Carolina to hire a consulting firm to work with the diocese in developing its capital campaign, from discerning a realistic goal, conducting a feasibility study and then rolling out the campaign in deliberate stages. A church spokesperson declined to specify the amount of the seed money but confirmed that the church’s up-front investment covers the consulting firm’s fee, which is likely to vary by local needs as dioceses engage with this new program. Right now, South Carolina is making direct appeals to potential large-gift donors based on a $3.3 million campaign goal. The public phase, when all members of the diocese will be asked to contribute, is scheduled to run from Aug. 29 through the end of the year. If the campaign is successful, the diocese has agreed to return 15% of its proceeds back to The Episcopal Church, which then will use the money to invest in other dioceses’ capital campaigns following the same approach. “We are helping support this on the front end, and then they, in turn, are agreeing to do a pay-it-forward model,” Robertson told ENS. “We’re able to help dioceses who have a clear vision of where they want to go but don’t have those up-front resources” to launch an effective capital campaign. Robertson added that he is working with other dioceses interested in receiving churchwide fundraising support, including one that likely will be ready to announce its participation in the coming months. For the South Carolina campaign, the diocese started with several months of engagement with church members, who were overwhelmingly supportive of the idea, Woodliff-Stanley said. That encouragement partly reflected South Carolina’s focus on recovering from the years-long effects of schism. The diocese once counted as many as 78 worshipping communities across the southeastern half of the state, including along the Atlantic Coast. Parochial report data show that the diocese’s baptized membership topped 29,000 in 2011, the year before the diocese was upended by theological and doctrinal disputes, especially related to full LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church. In November 2012, led by their bishop, a majority of attendees at a special diocesan convention voted to effectively leave The Episcopal Church. After they departed, Episcopal membership in the diocese dropped below 6,400. The remaining diocese counted 22 continuing parishes and missions. Over the following decade, Episcopalians in South Carolina found ways to worship and serve their communities amid a series of legal victories and setbacks in the church property lawsuit. Then, in April 2022, the state Supreme Court ordered ACNA to return 14 church properties to the Episcopal diocese, as well as St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center on Seabrook Island. ACNA was allowed to keep 15 other properties. That ruling was later revised to allow ACNA to keep several additional properties. As the Diocese of South Carolina began planning for the future of the returned properties and supporting Episcopalians still experiencing loss in other communities, “we recognized that we had an opportunity to set that story inside a larger narrative of disenfranchisement,” Woodliff-Stanley told ENS. Some of the challenges now faced by predominantly white congregations, she said, were quite familiar to the diocese’s historically Black congregations, which still struggle financially from longtime disparities in diocesan resource allocation. After identifying the need to address those racial disparities as part of its strategic vision, the diocese sought projects that aligned with that goal and its other top priorities when developing its capital campaign. The diocese settled on four projects to fund, one of which will pay for facilities improvements for Three Churches United, a coalition of three historically Black churches in Charleston. Two of those churches require significant repairs and upgrades. Calvary Episcopal Church is expected to receive $500,000, and the campaign has budgeted $400,000 for St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The third church in the coalition, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, has fewer facilities needs but would receive $100,000 for […]