Clergy

While September 11 will forever conjure up images of the terrorist attacks of 2001, that date has another association for the congregation of St. Barnabas’ Church in Newark. For on September 11, 1961, an interracial group of 27 Episcopal priests boarded a bus in New Orleans, and headed north to General Convention held in Detroit. En route this group, known as the “Prayer Pilgrimage,” made history by ending segregation in all bus and train terminals throughout the South.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once penned the verse, “For bells are the voice of the church, for they have tones that touch and search the heart of the young and old.” With the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on our nation upon us, that passage is especially poignant to those at All Saints’ Episcopal Parish in Hoboken, as that congregation takes time to remember the day, to honor the memory of those lost, and to continue to rebuild their lives.

On Wednesday, August 17, relatives, friends, and neighbors of Nazish Noorani gathered for a candlelight vigil led by the Rev. Laurie Wurm of St. John's Church in Boonton. Noorani was shot and killed the night before while walking with her husband and 3-year-old son to her father's house, after breaking the Ramadan fast at her sister's house nearby. The candlelight vigil was included in an online photo gallery by Star-Ledger photographer Saed Hindash.