In the News

[Episcopal News Service] “Ship ahoy!,” shouted a costumed boy racing up the stairs while trick-or-treating in the parish hall at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey.

Halloween arrived on All Souls Day, Nov. 2, this year for Morristown youngsters when the church hosted children for trick-or-treating on its campus after the holiday was postponed in New Jersey due to dangerous conditions caused by Hurricane Sandy, which roared through the region and caused widespread power outages with downed trees and wires in the Morristown area.

Random acts of kindness really do have a ripple effect.

Take St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown, for example.  On Thursday morning, a line of cars snaked in front of the church, inching its way to a distant gas station for precious fill-ups in the stressful aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Rector Janet Broderick and Assistant Rector Melissa Hall rolled a cart with tea and coffee to the bedraggled motorists on South Street. Melissa even car-sat for some of them while they dashed into the church for bathroom breaks.

Dioceses throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut continued to assess the damage and havoc caused by Hurricane Sandy as the region made slow progress toward recovery on Nov. 1.

Large sections of the three states remained without power Nov. 1, many of them losing power in advance of the Oct. 29 “superstorm”, and reports of damage and power outages continued to trickle in.

The Diocese of Newark reopened its offices Thursday, keeping regular business hours.

Not long after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Eastern Seaboard on Oct. 29. – claiming at least 55 lives, displacing thousands and causing blizzards, widespread flooding and power outages in America’s most densely populated region – affected Episcopal dioceses were starting to mobilize and assess the storm’s impact.

Episcopalians in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba are picking up the pieces one week after the same hurricane rampaged through the Caribbean, causing at least 69 deaths and bringing further devastation to some of the world’s poorest communities.

From worksheets to sheet music, notes of several forms can be found marked across the lines of wide-ruled and staff paper. For many North Jersey boys and girls an after-school program is available that couples classroom studies with choral practice. For many years, one of the hallmarks at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Englewood has been its professional music program, said Mark Trautman, 52, music director of the church.

When they were written in the 1940s and early 1950s, the postcards and letters that landed in Jutta Sturdevant’s care a few years back told of a kind of helplessness, of people forced from their homes by the Nazi terror.

On Sunday, Oct. 14, at a small white Episcopal church in West Orange, their struggle was remembered, and honored with a commitment to oppose such evil wherever it arises.

Bishop Beckwith is quoted in this article by New Jersey Monthly.

The summer of 2011 brought sunshine and warmth to residents of Hudson County. But for St. John’s church in Union City, summer cranked up the financial heat. The dwindling congregation and pressures of bill-paying threatened to shut down the Episcopal church built in 1901.

Fast-forward to Oct. 6, 2012, and a whole new tune (or, more literally, tunes) played on the corner of Palisade Avenue and 15th Street. Locals flocked to the venue that was dressed in yellow theatrical curtains and covered in colored lights, with the pulpit disguised as a 1920s cabaret-style stage.