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Graphic for the Fourth of July available to download and share on social media.

Prof. Dr Ulrich Becker, a German Protestant theologian, religious educator, and ecumenical scholar who played an important role in the educational work of the World Council of Churches (WCC), particularly in the area of Christian education, ecumenical formation, and renewal, passed away on 26 June. 

June 11-13, Anchorage, Alaska

[Diocese of Lexington] The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky announced on July 1 the final slate for nominees for election as the diocese’s ninth bishop. With the successful addition of the Rev. Karen Booth as a petition candidate, the candidates are: The Rev. Karen Booth, rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Georgetown, Kentucky. The Rev. Benjamin Hart, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Anchorage, Kentucky. The Rev. Rob Keim, rector of St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church in Arroyo Grande, California. The Rev. David Sibley, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Walla Walla, Washington. Clergy and lay leaders will have opportunities to meet the nominees during meet-and-greet events the week of July 20–24. These gatherings will allow members of the diocese to learn more about the candidates’ ministries, leadership experience and vision for the church. The schedule and more details can be found here. The Diocese of Lexington invites the church to join in a novena – nine days of prayer – leading up to the bishop election. Those prayers can be found here. The bishop election is scheduled to take place Aug. 1 at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, the second-largest city in the state. The consecration is planned for Dec. 12. Click here to learn more about the candidates and the search process. The ninth bishop will succeed Bishop Mark Van Koevering. They will lead the Diocese of Lexington’s 34 faith communities across the eastern half of Kentucky, extending north to the Ohio River and east to the mountain communities of Appalachia.

[Episcopal News Service] The U.S. Coast Guard’s Eagle cutter will lead an international fleet of tall and gray hull ships as they sail into New York harbor and salute the Statue of Liberty on July 4 in celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary and Independence Day. Among the officers, crew and cadets who are celebrating on the 295-foot Eagle is the Rev. Sue Carter, an Episcopal priest based in the Diocese of Michigan. This is her second year serving as auxiliary chaplain on the Eagle. “I’m looking forward to being alongside the cadets,” Carter, associate priest at St. Katherine’s Episcopal Church in Williamston, told Episcopal News Service before setting sail on the Eagle last month. As chaplain, Carter holds worship services on the Eagle and is available for counseling and pastoral care whenever anyone on board needs it. “They tell me that I’m their ‘nana’ on board,” she said. “Some also affectionately like to call me ‘Chaps.’” Tall ships are large, traditionally rigged sailing vessels. They are categorized into four classes, A-D, based on length and other criteria. The Eagle, known as “America’s Tall Ship,” is one of the United States’ two active commissioned tall ships. Commissioned and built in 1936, the three-masted barque Eagle was initially owned and operated by Nazi Germany as the Horst Wessel – named after the Sturmabteilung paramilitary member whose murder made him into a martyr for the Nazi Party. After World War II ended in 1945, the United States assumed ownership of the Horst Wessel as a war reparation. In May 1946, the ship was recommissioned as the Eagle. Today, the Eagle, a Class A vessel, is used for training Coast Guard cadets and officer candidates. The ship also occasionally serves a public relations role for the Coast Guard and the United States, as in this year’s 250th anniversary celebrations. “Every summer, the Coast Guard Academy’s sophomore class, or third class, divides into two phases and spends one phase training on the Eagle for a few weeks and another phase doing field work. Those who are part of the Eagle phase in July will have a particularly special time because they will be a part of the Independence Day festivities in New York City on this significant anniversary,” Carter said. “That’s an experience that can’t be replicated.” The weeklong celebration will begin on July 3 with Class B tall ships sailing down the East River from Hell Gate Bridge to Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn, followed by a military history boat tour that will highlight strategic uses of New York harbor from the Revolutionary War through today. The July 4 parade route includes sailing up the Hudson River from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, passing the Statue of Liberty, to the George Washington Bridge. After the parade, some of the participating tall ships will berth in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey, and will open for free public tours through July 7. One of those ships is Italy’s Amerigo Vespucci, which is named for the explorer and navigator for whom America is named. The celebration will culminate with the “Five Sisters Cup,” a regatta, or race, between the Eagle and three of its four identical sister ships: Portugal’s Sagres, Romania’s Mircea and Germany’s Gorch Fock. They will race from New York to Boston, Massachusetts. They last raced in 1976 for the United States’ bicentennial celebrations, which resulted in a Gorch Fock victory. “It’s all fascinating history,” Carter said. “People will be pumped because a lot of us remember when the tall ships did the same parade and race for the 200th anniversary celebrations.” After the festivities end in Boston, the Eagle will sail to Portland, Maine, where Carter will disembark.  Even though she’s looking forward to witnessing this celebration as a chaplain aboard the Eagle, Carter said she’s most looking forward to watching the cadets gain confidence operating the ship over the coming weeks. “Their skills and their confidence just grow immensely during that time period,” Carter, who was a journalism professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing for 28 years, said.  Carter and the cadets won’t stay on the Eagle the entire time. On July 5, for example, some will join her in attending a festive worship service at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, celebrating the United States’ 250th anniversary. The Rt. Rev. Ann Ritonia, The Episcopal Church’s bishop suffragan for Armed Forces and Federal Ministries, will preach. Earlier this year, Ritonia reminded Carter and other Armed Forces and Federal Ministries chaplains during an in-person gathering why their roles are necessary.  “As chaplains, we’re there for [cadets and active service members] in any capacity at any time, whether it’s a typical year or a special commemorative year like this one,” Carter said. -Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at [email protected].

June 4-6 in Manchester, N.H.

With the proper therapies, and in some cases surgeries and other medical intervention, infants born prematurely have every chance of growing up to their full potential. But in places like Vietnam, premature infants born in rural areas may have no access to top-flight medical care.

A webinar, “Nuclear disarmament in times of increased militarization - the experience from Nordic countries,” held 30 June, offered a history and reflections of the nuclear disarmament movement and how churches are called to respond. 

Facing a deadly Ebola flare up, the East Congo Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church is rolling out an integrated response — spiritual, medical and community based — to protect the most vulnerable populations.

[Episcopal News Service] If you ask New York Bishop Matthew Heyd for his two cents on how The Episcopal Church should mark the United States’ 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, you might well get 25 cents’ worth — as in one of the Pauli Murray commemorative quarters he keeps in a bag near his desk. “Pauli Murray is this extraordinary expression of all the things we’re talking about in terms of moving toward her ideals, both as a church and as a country,” Heyd explained. “Her life embodied this dialogue that we’re having [now] between our faith and our civic ideals.” This year, as the nation celebrates America 250, Heyd and other Episcopal leaders say the anniversary is a time to examine the nation’s and the church’s origin stories; a time for truth-telling and accountability, and for the church and the nation to live into their founding principles of liberty, justice, equality and respect for the dignity of every human being. “There’s no time better than this time for the church to claim who it is as church and to be that voice that holds the nation accountable to its lofty vision of appreciating the equality and dignity of every human being,” the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, Washington National Cathedral’s canon theologian, said. The 2024 commemorative quarter, issued as part of the American Women Quarters program, depicts the Rev. Pauli Murray, civil rights activist, co-founder of the National Organization for Women and the first Black woman ordained an Episcopal priest, on the reverse side. The obverse side depicts George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, who was also an Episcopalian. The quarter is a potent pocket-sized symbol that not only references the nation’s and church’s shared histories but also hints at what the church is being called to do moving forward – and who will do it – at this particular moment in time. Like Heyd, Brown Douglas and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe mentioned Murray and her legacy, as well as those who engaged in similar work, when asked which part of the church’s past gives them hope for the future. The front side of the coin: Change was made First, though, what exactly is that past? Here’s a brief primer on the early years of The Episcopal Church in the context of America’s beginnings, drawn from both “A History of the Episcopal Church,” by Robert W. Prichard and the online Archives of The Episcopal Church. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, officially severing ties with Great Britain. Thirty-four of the 56 signers were members of the Church of England, from which The Episcopal Church would split after the American Revolution. Among the points of contention: Clergy were required to swear loyalty to the king in their ordinations, and the Book of Common Prayer in use at the time included prayers for the British monarch. These expressions of support, and the deep divisions they caused, made it clear that the church, like the country, needed to make a formal break. In 1782, William White, rector of St. Peter’s and Christ Church in Philadelphia, who had been serving as chaplain to the Continental Congress since 1777, published “The Case of The Episcopal Church in the United States Considered.” It laid out a plan for the new Episcopal church though with a unicameral legislature, the bicameral legislature, similar to the way U.S. Congress is organized, would follow in 1789. On Sept. 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the U.S. as a sovereign nation by signing the Treaty of Paris. A group of 10 clergy in Connecticut elected the Rev. Samuel Seabury their bishop, but Church of England bishops refused to ordain him because English law would require him to take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Seabury was consecrated the first bishop of The Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, by three nonjuring Scottish bishops on Nov. 14, 1784, establishing the American episcopate. The first General Convention of The Episcopal Church took place in Philadelphia from Sept. 27 to Oct. 7, 1785. Among the agenda items: officially adopting the name “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America,” authorizing the preparation of an American Book of Common Prayer and drafting a General Ecclesiastical Constitution. In June 1786, British Parliament passed legislation that provided for the consecration of three bishops for the American church. The following February, William White and Samuel Provoost were consecrated bishops in Lambeth Palace Chapel by the archbishop of Canterbury. At its third General Convention, July 28 to Aug. 8, 1789, The Episcopal Church approved its Constitution, setting in place the organizational framework that still exists today and marking its formal split with the Church of England. For much of the next two centuries, the church and the U.S. government – forged in the same crucible of liberty – grew in parallel, facing the challenges of the day, including slavery, equal rights for women and LGBTQ+ rights. And, as exercises in representational government often do, The Episcopal Church made its share of missteps, including, but far from limited to, failing to take a stand against slavery in the run-up to the Civil War and refusing to ordain women priests until the Philadelphia Eleven forced the issue in 1974. A formal apology for slavery would not be issued until the 2006 General Convention. “Yes, we were at the table,” Rowe said, regarding the intertwined origin stories. “We have 11 presidents, 34 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. George Washington was an Episcopalian. That ultimately became an important force in our development. At one point, it was our goal and part of our mission strategy to be the national church.” That, Rowe explained, was how Washington National Cathedral, chartered in 1893, came to exist. “Our idea was that we would sort of represent the Christian ideals of […]