[Episcopal News Service -- Indianapolis] Same-gender couples soon can have their lifelong relationships blessed using a rite approved by General Convention July 10.
[Episcopal News Service -- Indianapolis] On the day when General Convention affirmed a policy of nondiscrimination against transgender people and the House of Bishops approved provisional use of a liturgy for same-gender blessings, the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop told the LGBT communit
A Victoria Foundation grant to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra teaches 600 Newark elementary students how to play the violin. Funds given to Integrity train former prisoners to re-enter the job market. Money donated to Aspira prevents at-risk middle- and high-school students from dropping out of school.
For decades, the Victoria Foundation has championed Newark by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its schools, help its families and revitalize its neighborhoods.
Now, like the groups it supports, the independent foundation is calling Newark home.
The youth group from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown has just completed a week in Topsail, N.C., on its annual mission trip. Here are reflections from the young volunteers, compiled by chaperone Alan Chorun.
[Episcopal New Service — Indianapolis] When Caroline Christie attended the 2009 General Convention with a group of other high school students from the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, she didn’t know what to expect.
“I was just going because my friends were going,” she said. “I didn’t know that the Episcopal Church was so big, and everything that they did. It was a really eye-opening experience.”
And it whetted her appetite for more. Christie is back for the 77th General Convention, a lay deputy elected at age 17 to represent the Newark diocese along with Gibson Oakley, who was 16 when he was elected in January 2011.
Editor's note: This article quotes Laura Russell, Esq., a lay deputy from the Diocese of Newark to General Convention.
[Episcopal News Service] In South Florida, a known hotbed for sex trafficking, Sheila Acevedo has spent 17 years as a volunteer on the front lines assisting victims. Her vigilance helped rescue two girls, aged 3 and 5, who were living in a car with their father. The girls, who didn’t know how to use silverware and who were not wearing underwear, would offer to give massages, she said.
Gibson Oakley made no bones about what will be on his mind as he heads to General Convention this week. One of two teenagers who will be part of the lay deputation representing the Diocese of Newark, Gibson told those who would be voting for him that the church needs to be a welcoming haven for LGBT youth who encounter hostility on a daily basis.
At a wedding last week at Church of the Atonement in Tenafly, the bride and groom were not the only couple at the altar.
As the Rev. Lynne Weber celebrated the rite, she was assisted by the rector from All Saints Episcopal Church in Leonia — her husband, the Rev. Dean Weber.
"We often help each other and support with pastoral services, and bigger events like funerals and weddings," Lynne Weber said.
The Reverend Rose Cohen Hassan of Trinity Church, who serves as manager of Services at HIGHWAYS (Helping Individuals Gain Hope Will Always Yield Success), has seen a lot of hardship in her life, both in Bayonne where she helps feed and clothe some of the neediest families in the city as well as in her previous assignment in Kearny. But it took overhearing some of her clients one day for her to realize that hardship reaches every level.
It was an eye-opening experience. Hackettstown High School student Justin Simmons was delivering a bag of food to a family enrolled in the United Way Summer Backpack Program last summer. When the family invited the then-16 year-old volunteer in their kitchen, Simmons was stunned to see the nearly empty cupboards.
“The small amount of food on their shelves was what was left from our delivery two weeks before,” Simmons said. “I was shocked. I never knew hunger was such a concern in my own town.”
